ATM communication system, process migration method in the ATM communication system, and handover processing method

ABSTRACT

An ATM communication system has a connection setting section for controlling a plurality of ATM switches to set an n:n bidirectional ATM connection having n terminals of a plurality of constituent terminals as terminal points and using the VPI/VCI for identifying the n terminal points, and a process ID allocating section for allocating an MID as a process ID to a plurality of processes, executed by the n terminals for sending a message to the bidirectional ATM connection. The ATM communication system migrates a process executed on an arbitrary terminal to another terminal while keeping the process ID allocated to the processes. Where a dead-lock occurs due to that a process becomes a sleep state for the reason of that the bandwidth of a physical link is insufficient for executing in parallel the processes on the ATM communication system, the bandwidth of the physical link that a sleeping process occupies is intercepted to avoid a CAC dead-lock.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a communication system, including aplurality of terminals, for performing communication among theseterminals and, more particularly, to an ATM communication system in anATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and a process migration method in theATM communication system.

2. Description of the Related Art

An ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) attracts attention as a techniqueaiming at increasing the speed of transmission/switching technique. TheATM is a technique in which all pieces of information are carried byfixed-length short packets called cells to be transferred to aim atpackaging hardware for packet exchange, thereby make it easy totransmit/switch information at a high speed.

The ATM is regarded as “promised solution” of a future B-ISDN (Broadbandaspects of Integrated Services Digital Network). For this reason, studyand development for applying the ATM technique to various communicationsystems are actively performed in recent years. For example, a so-calledATM-LAN in which the ATM technique is applied to not only a publicnetwork operated by a carrier but also a network, i.e., local areanetwork (LAN), using a restricted area, e.g., one floor of an office toimprove inter-operability with a public network, or a method of applyingthe ATM technique to a so-called CATV network which presentscommunication services to a restricted area are developed.

In the ATM communication system using the ATM technique, beforecommunication, a so-called connection is set between terminals tocommunicate with each other. When the terminals to communicate with eachother sends a cell to the communication system, the identifier of theconnection is written in the header portion of the cell. Thecommunication system refers to the header portion of the cell totransfer the cell along the connection to which the cell belongs,thereby transferring the cell to a desired terminal. In the ITU-Tstandards, the identifier of the connection in an ATM layer is called aVPI/VCI.

In this manner, in the ATM communication system, communication isperformed by using a connection. For this reason, an ATM switchconstituting the ATM communication system has a routing tag table forholding information indicating a specific output port to which a cellbelonging the connection set on each input port is transferred and thevalue of a new VPI/VCI used when the cell belonging to the connection issent from the ATM switch. Connection setting in the ATM layer isperformed by setting the routing tag table on the ATM switch throughwhich the connection passes to be a desired value.

The ATM communication system performs communication by setting aconnection in advance as described above. Desired communication qualitycan be advantageously given to each terminal by allocating the bandwidthof each physical link to the connection in advance. However, the ATMcommunication system has the following problem.

A conventional ATM communication system cannot efficiently perform amulti-media application due to the following problem.

FIG. 18 shows the arrangement of an ATM-LAN serving as an example usedto explain the problem. This ATM-LAN is constituted such that terminals#1 to #5 (P021 to P025) are connected to each other by hubs #1 to #5(P011 to P015). Physical link pairs P031 to P039 are arranged to connectthe hubs and terminals to each other in order to realize full duplexcommunication. Physical links such as optical fibers or UTPs provideunidirectional information transfer, and are used as pairs.

In addition, the terminal #1 (P021) has a file #1 (P041), the terminal#2 (P022) has a file #2 (P042), and, similarly, the terminal #5 (P025)has a file #5 (P045).

In a conventional LAN such as an ethernet, a communication bandwidth ona coaxial cable is shared by connections. However, in an ATM-LAN, CAC(Connection Admission Control) which is unique to the ATM-LAN isperformed before communication is started, a communication bandwidth isexclusively allocated to each connection. For this reason, in theconventional LAN, a communication bandwidth allocated to a connectionchanges due to the operation of other processes. In the ATM-LAN, sincecommunication bandwidths allocated to connections does not change due tothe operation of other processes, communication which assures QoS suchas to read data from a file at a constant speed can be performed. On theother hand, in a conventional LAN, a process using the LAN can alwayssend a message. In contrast to this, in the ATM-LAN, when communicationbandwidths are not allocated by the CAC, communication cannot beperformed. For this reason, in consideration of execution ofapplications using communication bandwidths and a resource such asfiles, when the applications distributed on the ATM-LAN are executed,the following problem is posed.

This problem will be described with reference to the ATM-LAN shown inFIG. 18.

A process A executed on the terminal #1 (P021) assures the file #1(P041) and transfers it to the terminal #3 (P023). In addition, aprocess B executed on the terminal #2 (P022) refers to the contents ofthe file #1. When the processes A and B are executed simultaneously, thefollowing may occur.

The process A opens the file #1 (P041) first. On the other hand, theprocess B obtain all the communication bandwidths on physical links P036and P037. In this state, the process A tries to obtain a route to thefile #3 (P043) and the communication bandwidths on the physical linksP036, P033, P034, and P038. However, at this time, since all thecommunication bandwidths of the physical link P036 has been assured bythe process B. The process A fails to obtain the communicationbandwidths. The process B tries to open the file #1 (P041). However,since the file #1 (P041) has been opened by the process A, the process Bfails to open the file. When the processes A and B are slept in thisstate, a dead-lock state occurs.

Dead-lock of such a type occurs due to conflict of the usage requests ofthe processes A and B between the file #1 (P041) and the communicationbandwidth on the physical link P036. More specifically, the dead-lock ofsuch a type occurs such that the CAC is executed to exclusively give thecommunication bandwidths to a certain process, and is called CACdead-lock. When communication bandwidths are allocated by Q. 2931, eachprocess cannot recognize that the dead-lock state is caused-conflict onthe communication bandwidths on the physical link P036, and the CACdead-lock cannot be canceled.

In a general communication system, due to a defective terminal, it maybe desired to migrate a process executed on the terminal to anotherterminal. Such migration of a process from one terminal to anotherterminal is generally called process migration. In the conventional ATMcommunication system, this process migration is performed by thefollowing procedure.

FIG. 31 shows a procedure of process migration on the conventional ATMcommunication system. In this procedure shown in FIG. 31, terminals #1(X041), #2 (X042), . . . , #n (X04 n) which are connected to each otherby the ATM communication system. In the conventional ATM communicationsystem, a Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 which terminates Q. 2931protocol for setting connections is present, a signaling VC#i (X02 i) isset between the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 and the terminals X04 i.The signaling VC#i (X02 i) is used to cause each terminal to specify theterminal of a callee or destination for the Q. 2931 terminated portionX01. The Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 sets a connection between aterminal which requests connection setting and a terminal specified bythe connection setting request to use the connection for communicationbetween the terminals. Although an ATM switch and physical linksconstituting the ATM communication system are omitted in FIG. 31 toavoid cumbersome illustration, it is considered that the ATM switch andphysical links are present at a portion where the above VCs are set.

In the example shown in FIG. 31, a process #1 (X051) is executed on theterminal # (X041), and a process #2 (X052) is executed on the terminal#2 (X042). The process #1 (X051) communicates with the process #2 (X052)through a connection X03. In this state, it is considered that theprocess #2 (X052) operated on the terminal #2 (X042) is migrated to theterminal #n (X04 n).

FIG. 32 shows a state after the migration. In order to perform thecommunication between the process #1 (X051) and the process #2 (X052), anew connection Y02 is set between the terminal #1 (X041) and theterminal #n (X04 n). A connection Y03 set to perform the communicationbetween these processes before migration is released. In order tomigrate the process #2 (X052) from the terminal #2 (X042) to theterminal #n (X04 n), a connection Y01 is set between the terminal #2(X042) and the terminal #n (X04 n). Upon completion of migration, theconnection Y01 is released.

FIG. 33 shows a migration procedure performed in a conventional ATMcommunication system to shift the state shown in FIG. 31 to the stateshown in FIG. 32.

When the terminal #2 (X042) tries to migrate the process #2 (X052)executed on the terminal #2 (X042), the terminal #2 (X042) requests theQ. 2931 terminated portion X01 to set the connection Y01 (step Z01).When the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 receives the connection settingrequest, the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 writes a proper value in therouting tag table of the ATM switch in the ATM system to set theconnection (step Z02), and notifies the terminal #n (X04 n) that theconnection is set (step Z03). When the terminal #n (X04 n) can receivethe newly set connection, after the terminal #n (X04 n) performs aprocess for receiving the connection, the terminal #n (X04 n) notifiesthe Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 that the process for receiving theconnection is performed (step Z04). When the Q. 2931 terminated portionX01 receives the connection receivable notification from the terminal #n(X04 n), the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 notifies the terminal #2(X042) of connection setting completion (step Z05). In this manner,since the connection Y01 is set between the terminal #2 and the terminal#n, the terminal #2 (X042) communicates with the terminal #n (X04 n) byusing the connection Y01 to transfer the process #2 (X052) from theterminal #2 (X042) to the terminal #n (X04 n) (step Z06). At the sametime, the terminal #2 (X042) uses a connection X03 to notify theterminal #1 (X041) that the process #2 (X052) executed on the terminal#2 (X042) is migrated to the terminal #n (X04 n), i.e., that processmigration is performed (step Z07).

When the terminal #1 (X041) is notified of process migration asdescribed above, the terminal #1 (X041) temporarily stops execution ofthe process #1 (X051) and, at the same time, requests the Q. 2931terminated portion X01 to set the connection between the terminal #1(X041) and the terminal #n (X04 n) serving as a migration destination(step Z08). When the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 receives the requestto set a connection, the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 rewrites therouting tag table of the ATM switch on the route of the connection witha proper value to set the requested connection (step Z09). Uponcompletion of connection setting, the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01notifies the terminal #n (X04 n) that the connection is set (step Z10).When the terminal #n (X04 n) is notified of connection setting, afterthe terminal #n (X04 n) performs a predetermined process for receivingthe connection, and notifies the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 thatreception of the connection is completed (step Z11).

When the terminal #n (X04 n) notifies the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01of the reception of the connection, the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01notifies the terminal #1 (X041) which performs the connection settingrequest that the connection setting is completed (step Z12).

Since the connection Y02 between the terminal #1 (X041) and the terminal#n (X04 n) is set by the above procedure, the terminal #1 (X041) usesthe connection X03 and the connection Y02 to notify the terminal #2(X042) and the terminal #n (X04 n) that execution of the process #1(X051) and the process #2 (X052) can be restarted (step Z13). By usingthis notification as a trigger, execution of the process #1 (X051) onthe terminal #1 (X041) and execution of the process #2 (X052) on theterminal #n (X04 n) are restarted.

On the ATM communication system, the connection X03 which has not beenused in the communication between the process #1 (X051) and the process#2 (X052) and the connection Y01 used in only migration are still set.In order to release these connections, after the execution of theprocess #1 (X051) and the process #2 (X052) are restarted, the terminal#1 (X041) and the terminal #2 (X042) request the Q. 2931 terminatedportion X01 to release the connection X02 and the connection Y01,respectively.

A sequences for releasing the connection X02 are shown in steps Z14,Z15, Z16, Z17, and Z18 in FIG. 33 (45), and a sequence for releasing theconnection Y01 are shown in steps Z19, Z20, Z21, Z22, and Z23. Eachsequence performs connection release according to the followingsequence. The terminal of a connection release request sender sends aconnection release request to the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01. Whenthe Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 receives the connection releaserequest, the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 notifies the other terminalwhich performs communication by using the connection of connectionrelease. The terminal notified of connection release executes apredetermined process executed in connection release, and then notifiesthe Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 that the connection release isreceived. When the connection release is received, the Q. 2931terminated portion X01 changes the routing tag table of the ATM switchon the route of the connection to be released into a proper value,thereby releasing the connection. Upon completion of this operation, theQ. 2931 terminated portion X01 notifies the terminal which requires theconnection release that the connection release is completed.

The above operation is a process which is executed when the process #2(X052) is migrated from the terminal #2 (X042) to the terminal #n (X04n).

As is apparent from the above description, when process migration is tobe executed on the conventional ATM communication system, connectionsetting/release must be performed many times. In addition, since theconnection setting/release is executed by the Q. 2931 terminated portionX01, the throughput of the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 must beincreased to rapidly execute process migration, and, a time required forrewriting the routing tag of the ATM switch must be shortened. However,when these measures are executed, the cost of the ATM communicationsystem disadvantageously increases.

In addition, it should be noted that, as the values of the VPI/VCI usedfor identifying the connection Y02 by the process #1 (X051) and theprocess #2 (X052), i.e., the values of the VPI/VCI used when theseprocesses send/receive a cell, values set when the connection X03 isused cannot be directly used. In the convention ATM communicationsystem, the VPI/VCI for identifying a connection on each physical linkis managed by the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01, and the Q. 2931terminated portion X01 notifies the VPI/VCI at the terminal point of theconnection Y02 to the terminal #n in connection setting report atreporting connection setup in step Z10 and to the terminal #1 inconnection setting completion in step Z12. The terminals #1 (X041) and#n (X04 n) must use the notified VPI/VCI to identify message to theprocesses #1 (X051) and #2 (X052), thereby performing routing to arequired process. From the terminal #n viewpoint, this fact means thatit must be recognized that the set connection is new connection settingaccording to process migration in step Z10 in which connection settingis reported. This recognition can be executed by the following manner.That is, information indicating that the connection is new connectionsetting according to process migration is written as user-userinformation serving as one information element of a Q. 2931 message, andthe terminal in which the connection is set refers to the user-userinformation to perform matching between the notified VPI/VCI and theprocess using the VPI/VCI.

However, a change in VPI/VCI used before/after migration means that,when migration occurs, not only the migrated process but also a processwhose execution is restarted on the same terminal refer to theinformation element of the message sent from the Q. 2931 terminatedportion X01, the connections used when these processes input and outputinformation must be reconnected. More specifically, the processes mustrefer to the message sent from the Q. 2931 terminated portion X01 toperform any process to all the processes related to the process in whichmigration occurs. For this reason, a time required for migration is moreincreased.

As described above, in the conventional ATM communication system, theCAD dead-lock occurs and a multi-media application cannot be efficientlyexecuted. In addition, when process migration is to be performed, accessto the Q. 2931 terminated portion must be performed in a complex patternto set and release a large number of connections. In order to performprocess migration at a high speed, the throughput of the Q. 2931terminated portion X01 must be increased, and a time required forrewriting the routing tag of the ATM switch must be shortened. For thisreason, the cost of the ATM switch disadvantageously increases. Inaddition, in order to realize high-speed process migration, it is afault that a large number of processes must be performed to variousprocesses in migration.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is an object of the present invention to provide an ATM communicationsystem capable of suppressing occurrence of the CAC dead-lock andrapidly performing process migration without increasing a system cost, aprocess switching method in the ATM communication system, and a processmigration method in the ATM communication system.

According to the present invention, there is provided an ATMcommunication system comprising a plurality of ATM switches, and aplurality of terminals connected to each other thorough the plurality ofATM switches, wherein, since the bandwidth of a connection required tobe set exceeds the remaining bandwidth of at least one physical linkbetween the ATM switches or between the ATM switches and the terminals,when dead-lock occurs when a process executed by one of the plurality ofterminals is slept, the process executed by the ATM communication systemintercepts the bandwidth of at least one physical link obtained by aslept process group to allocate a bandwidth required by the processwhich requires the connection setting.

According to the present invention, there is provided an ATMcommunication system comprising a plurality of ATM switches, a pluralityof terminals connected to each other through the ATM switches, aconnection setting section for controlling the plurality of ATM switchesto set an n:n bidirectional ATM connection having n terminals of theplurality of terminals as n terminal points and using the same VPI andVCI of a cell header serving as a connection identifier for identifyingthe n terminal points, a process identifier allocating section forallocating, to a plurality of processes for sending a message to thebidirectional ATM connection, a process identifier for identifying theprocesses, and a migrating section for migrating the process executed onan arbitrary terminal of the n terminals to another terminal of the nterminals while the process identifier allocated to the processes by theprocess identifier allocating section.

According to the first aspect of the present invention, there isprovided a process migration method in an ATM communication systemcomprising the steps of: setting, through a plurality of ATM switches,an n:n bidirectional ATM connection having n terminals of a plurality ofterminals as terminal points and using the same connection identifierfor identifying the n terminal points; allocating, to a plurality ofprocesses, executed by the n terminals, for sending a message to thebidirectional ATM connection, the process identifier for identifying theprocesses; and migrating the process executed on an arbitrary terminalof the n terminals to another terminal of the n terminals while keepingthe process identifier allocated to the processes.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, there isprovided a handover processing method in an ATM communication system inwhich a plurality of fixed terminals and a plurality of mobile terminalinterface apparatuses arranged on different radio zones for interfacingmobile terminals are connected to each other through a plurality of ATMswitches, comprising the steps of: setting an n:m first unidirectionalATM connection having n terminals of the plurality of fixed terminals asinput side terminal points and m mobile terminal interface apparatusesof the plurality of mobile terminal interface apparatus and an m:nsecond unidirectional ATM connection having the m mobile terminalinterface apparatus as input side terminal points and the n fixedterminals as output side terminal points by controlling the plurality ofATM switches; allocating the same connection identifier to identify them input side terminal points of the first unidirectional ATM connectionand identify the m output side terminals of the second unidirectionalATM connection; and specifying an ATM connection used in communicationwith the fixed terminals with the connection identifier allocated by theconnection identifier allocating section when the mobile terminalcommunicates with the fixed terminal while moving.

According to the first aspect of the present invention, when processmigration in which a process (process for transferring a message to anATM connection) executed in a certain terminal is migrated to anotherterminal is to be performed, since the ATM connection for executingprocess migration is preset in n terminals including the terminal inwhich the process migration is executed, unlike the prior art,connection setting/release need not be performed by a Q. 2931 terminatedportion. As the ATM connection for executing the process migration, ann:n bidirectional ATM connection having the same identifier at aterminal point is set. A process identifier used to perform a process oftransferring a message to the bidirectional ATM connection is allocatedto a process subjected to migration, and the process identifier is notchanged before/after the migration. For this reason, influence on aninter-process communication process following the migration isminimized. Therefore, process migration can be performed at a speedhigher than that in the prior art. In addition, since the processmigration is performed without the Q. 2931 terminated portion, thethroughput of the Q. 2931 terminated portion need not be increased, anda time required for rewriting the routing take of the ATM exchanger neednot be shortened. For this reason, the cost of the ATM communication canbe reduced.

The process which performs communication by the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection sends/receives, through the ATM connection, a message of asingle cell including the process identifier and the identifier of theterminal in which the process is executed, so that process identifiersrespectively used by processes are exchanged with each other. In thiscase, when each process can access the n:n bidirectional ATM connection,the corresponding process can know unused process identifier byreceiving only the notified message. For this reason, a new process canbe easily added.

In a process of allocating a resource to be managed to a resourcemanaging process group, when a process identifier is used to identifyprocesses from each other, even if process migration in which a terminalin which one arbitrary process of the resource managing process group ismerged to another terminal occurs, the process can conceal theoccurrence of the process migration from the other resource managingprocesses. In addition, when resource identifiers of the resourcemanaging process group can be made globally unique, even if a resourcemanaging process is migrated, data of the resource managing process neednot be rewritten. For this reason, high-speed process migration can beperformed.

According to another aspect of the present invention, the connectionidentifier of the m output terminal points of an n:m firstunidirectional ATM connection is made identical to the connectionidentifier of the m input terminal points of an n:m secondunidirectional ATM connection. For this reason, even if a mobileterminal which accesses these input/output terminal points changes anaccess point, i.e., moves the access point to a different radio zone, anATM connection used for communication with a fixed terminal withoutchanging the connection identifier can be set to continue thecommunication, and migration of the mobile terminal, i.e., a handoverprocess, can be performed with a simple protocol.

Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth inthe description which follows, and in part will be obvious from thedescription, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectsand advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means ofthe instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in theappended claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute apart of the specification, illustrate presently preferred embodiments ofthe invention and, together with the general description given above andthe detailed description of the preferred embodiments given below, serveto explain the principles of the invention.

FIG. 1 is a view showing the arrangement of an ATM communication systemaccording to Embodiment 2 of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing a schematic procedure for processmigration in Embodiment 1;

FIG. 3 is a view for explaining a setting method on the merging side ofan n:n bidirectional ATM connection in Embodiment 1;

FIG. 4 is a view for explaining a first setting method on the copy sideof the n:n bidirectional ATM connection in Embodiment 1;

FIG. 5 is a view for explaining a second setting method on the copy sideof the n:n bidirectional ATM connection in Embodiment 1;

FIG. 6 is a view for explaining a third setting method on the copy sideof the n:n bidirectional ATM connection in Embodiment 1;

FIG. 7 is a schematic view showing an n:n bidirectional ATM connection;

FIG. 8 is a schematic view showing the arrangement of an ATMcommunication system according to Embodiment 2 of the present invention;

FIG. 9 is a schematic view showing an m:n unidirectional ATM connectionin Embodiment 2;

FIG. 10 is a view showing the arrangement of a system in which the firstapplication of the present invention according to Embodiment 3 of thepresent invention;

FIG. 11 is a view showing the physical arrangement of radio zones andradio clusters in Embodiment 3;

FIG. 12 is a view showing an ATM connection set to execute the firstapplication;

FIG. 13 is a flow chart showing a schematic procedure for a handoverprocess in Embodiment 3:

FIG. 14 is a view showing the arrangement of a mobile terminal controlsection in Embodiment 3;

FIG. 15 is a view showing a method of setting a movement controlconnection in Embodiment 3:

FIG. 16 is a view showing message sequences exchanged between a mobileterminal and a communication network in Embodiment 3;

FIG. 17 is a view showing the format of an MID operation message inEmbodiment 3;

FIG. 18 is a view showing the arrangement of a system in which thesecond application of the present invention is executed according toEmbodiment 4 of the present invention;

FIG. 19 is a view showing the correspondence between physical resourcesand resource managing processes in Embodiment 4;

FIG. 20 is a view showing the correspondence among a resource managingprocess, a user process, and a process scheduler in Embodiment 4;

FIG. 21 is a view showing the principle of CAC dead-lock detection inthe second application;

FIG. 22 is a view for explaining a process group for explaining thedetailed operation of the second application;

FIG. 23 is a view for explaining a resource request of each process ofthe process group for explaining the detailed operation of the secondapplication;

FIG. 24 is a first view for explaining a process scheduling by thesecond application;

FIG. 25 is a second view for explaining a process scheduling by thesecond application;

FIG. 26 is a third view for explaining a process scheduling by thesecond application;

FIG. 27 is a fourth view for explaining a process scheduling by thesecond application;

FIG. 28 is a fifth view for explaining a process scheduling by thesecond application;

FIGS. 29A and 29B are views showing the arrangement of a process queueused when the bandwidth of one physical link is allocated to a pluralityof processes in Embodiment 4;

FIG. 30 is a view showing a process arrangement used when the presentinvention is applied to the second application;

FIG. 31 is a view showing the arrangement of a conventional ATMcommunication system;

FIG. 32 is a view for explaining process migration in the conventionalATM communication system; and

FIG. 33 is a view showing an executing procedure for process migrationin the conventional ATM communication system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below withreference to the accompanying drawings.

The problem of process migration is described first.

FIG. 1 is a view showing the schematic arrangement of an ATMcommunication system according to an embodiment of the presentinvention, and shows the following state. That is, four terminals #1 to#4 (1011 to 1014) are connected to each other through three ATM switches#1 to #3 (1021 to 1023), and an n:n bidirectional ATM connection 103having the terminals #1 to #4 (1011 to 1014) as terminal points is set.As a matter of course, physical links are present between the ATMswitches and between the ATM switches and the terminals in which the n:nbidirectional ATM connection 103 is set. However, the physical links areomitted in FIG. 1 for descriptive convenience. In this example, as then:n bidirectional ATM connection 103, a 4:4 bidirectional ATM connectionis constituted by four terminals and three ATM switches. As a matter ofcourse, an ATM communication system constituted by an n:n bidirectionalATM connection can be applied as an ATM communication system constitutedby an arbitrary number of terminals and an arbitrary number of ATMswitches.

In the terminals #1 to #4 (1011 to 1014), four processes #1 to #4 (1061to 1064) which perform a process with interaction communicate with eachother through the n:n bidirectional ATM connection 103. In this case,when process migration is performed according to the present invention,i.e., when the processes #1 to #4 (1061 to 1064) respectively executedin the terminals #1 to #4 (1011 to 1014) are migrated to other terminals#i (101 i), it is one characteristic feature that some or all of the ATMswitches #1 to #3 (1021 to 1023) are controlled by a connection settingsection 104 to preset the n:n bidirectional ATM connection 103 to theterminals #i in which processes #i may be executed. The presentinvention also has the following characteristic feature. That is, then:n bidirectional ATM connection 103 uses the same identifier (VPI/VCIin this example) as the connection identifiers for identifying theconnection in the terminals #1 to #4 (1011 to 1014).

Note that the number of the processes are not limited to four, and thenumber may be larger or smaller than four. In this case, the followingdescription is performed while the number of processes is assumed asfour. In addition, communication need not be performed by using the n:nbidirectional ATM connection 103 having the number of branches which isequal to the number of processes, and an n:n bidirectional ATMconnection having the number of branches which is larger than the numberof processes can be used.

Assume that a variable length message is used to perform communicationof the processes #1 to #4 (1061 to 1064). In this case, as well known,an adaptation process must be performed each process and thebidirectional ATM connection 103. This adaptation process constituted bya cellulating process for deforming the variable length message in theform of a fixed length cell, and a message assembling process forassembling fixed length cells to reproduce a variable length message onthe basis of the fixed length cells. In this case, in the terminals #1to #4 (1011 to 1014), cellulating section 1071 to 1074 and messageassembly sections 1081 to 1084 are arranged between the processes #1 to#4 (1061 to 1064) and the bidirectional ATM connection 103. Assume that,in the adaptation process in this case, an AAL3/4 defined by I. 363 ofITU-T standards is applied. The SAR sub-layer of the AAL3/4 includes anidentifier called an MID. By using the MID, a plurality of messagessimultaneously transferred can be correctly assembled in the sameVPI/VCI.

Note that the adaptation process applied to the present invention is notlimited to the AAL3/4 described in this embodiment, and any adaptationprocess in which, even if a plurality of messages are simultaneouslytransferred to the same VPI/VCI as described above, the messages can becorrectly assembled may be used. In this case, information such as theMID of the AAL3/4 indicating that the same identifier is added to thecells formed from the same message, i.e., that the cells are from thesame message source is present in the header portion of an adaptationlayer.

The connection setting section 104 may be, e.g., a network controlfunction which is set by a maintenance person of an ATM communicationsystem from an OAM interface comprising an ATM switch such asSNMP/CMIS/CMIP, or may be a network control function which is set by arequest from a terminal according to a call setting protocol such as Q.2931 or a call setting program disclosed in Japanese Patent ApplicationNo. 6-31180. More specifically, the execution position of the connectionsetting section 104 may be the ATM switch of terminal in the ATMcommunication system. In the following concrete embodiments, theexecution position of the ATM connection setting by the connectionsetting section 104 is both the ATM switch and terminal.

When the processes #1 to #4 (1061 to 1064) executed on the terminals #1to #4 (1011 to 1014) change a message into cells and send the cells tothe n:n bidirectional ATM connection 103, the terminals #1 to #4 (1011to 1014) use process identifiers (to be referred to as process IDshereinafter) added to the processes #1 to #4 (1061 to 1064) to changethe message into cells in the cellulating section 1071 to 1074. In thiscase, when the processes #1 to #4 (1061 to 1064) executed on theterminals #1 to #4 (1011 to 1014) are migrated to other terminals, thesame process IDs can be used before/after the migration to make cellsfrom the message in sending them.

The process IDs are notified to the terminals #1 to #4 (1011 to 1014) bya process ID allocation section 105 when the processes #1 to #4 (1061 to1064) are started or the n:n bidirectional ATM connection 103 is set.The processes #1 to #4 (1061 to 1064) themselves may have the functionof the process ID allocation section 105, or another function of the ATMswitch or another process of the terminal may have the function of theprocess ID allocation section 105. When the processes #1 to #4 (1061 to1064) themselves have the function of the process ID allocation section105, a method of statically acquiring process IDs in which themaintenance person of the ATM communication system allocates the processIDs in advance when a program for realizing the processes is described,or a method of causing the processes to communicate with each other todynamically acquire the process IDs used by the processes may be used.The following concrete embodiments have the following two cases. Thatis, the process ID allocation section 105 is realized such a manner thatthe process ID allocation section 105 is distributed into the processeswhich perform interaction by using the bidirectional ATM connection 103,and allocation of process IDs is performed in another process on theterminal side or on the ATM switch side.

<Procedure of Process Migration>

A schematic procedure of process migration in this embodiment will bedescribed below with reference to the flow chart shown in FIG. 2.

When a service in which a process migration is predicted is started onan ATM communication system, the connection setting section 104 sets thebidirectional ATM connection 103 having the same connection identifierthrough the ATM stitches #1 to #3 (1021 to 1023) (step S11).

The process ID allocation section 105 allocates the process IDs foridentifying these processes to the plurality of processes #1 to #4 (1061to 1064) which send a message to the bidirectional ATM connection 103(step S12).

When a process migration request is generated, processes #i (106 i)executed in arbitrary terminals #i (101 i) of the n terminals #1 to #4(1011 to 1014) are migrated to other terminals #j (101 j) of the nterminals #1 to #4 (1011 to 1014) while process IDs allocated to theprocesses are held (step S13).

With the above procedure, the process migration in which the processes#i (106 i) executed in the terminals #i (101 i) are migrated to theterminals #j (101 j) is executed.

<Concrete Operation of Embodiment 1>

The operation of this embodiment will be more concretely describedbelow. The processes #1 to #4 (1061 to 1064) executed on the terminals#1 to #4 (1011 to 1014) are connected to each other by the 4:4bidirectional ATM connection 103. An MID serving as a process identifierused when a message is sent to the bidirectional ATM connection 103 isallocated to each of the processes #i (106 i). When each messagereceived from the processes #i (106 i) is to be divided into cells by acellulating sections 107 i, the MID is added to each of the dividedpieces. When the messages are to be assembled by message assemblysections 108 i, cells having the same MID are gathered to assemble themessages. In this manner, even if cells from a plurality of messagesources are merged and given to the message assembly sections 108 i, themessage assembly sections 108 i can correctly reproduce the messagesunless the arriving order of the cells sent from the same process ineach process is the same as the sending order of the cells in the 4:4bidirectional ATM connection 103.

This MID is allocated to each process in such a manner that the same MIDis not used among the processes which perform communication by the samebidirectional ATM connection, i.e., that the same number is preventedfrom being used. This allocating method will be described later.

When each of the processes #i (106 i) tries to transfer some informationto another process, the process #i (106 i) changes the information intoa message and sends the message to a corresponding one of thecellulating sections 107 i. Each of the cellulating sections 107 idivides the received message into cells and sends the cells to thebidirectional ATM connection 103. The bidirectional ATM connection 103temporarily merges the cells sent from each of the cellulating sections107 i, copies each cell and sends the copies to each of the messageassembly sections 108 i. When each of the message assembly sections 108i, the message assembly section 108 i refers to the MIDs of the receivedcells to gather the cells from the same message source, and assembles amessage with referring to information except for the MIDs defined by I.363 of the ITU-T standards. As a result, a message sent from one processis reproduced in all the message assembly sections 108 i. In this case,since a message transferred with the MID used in a corresponding one ofthe cellulating sections 107 i is a message formed and sent by thecorresponding process 106 i, the message assembly section 108 i maydiscard such a message.

The message assembly sections 108 i sequentially send the assembledmessages to the processes #i (106 i). For this reason, a message sentfrom one of the processes #i (106 i) is received by one of processes #j(106 j). Process migration means, for example, that the positions of theprocess #1 (1061) and the process #2 (1062) in the state shown in FIG. 1are replaced with each other. At this time, when the processes #1 and #2migrate together with their MIDs, i.e., when the MID used in thecellulating section 1071 and the MID used in the cellulating section1072 are changed into 2 and 1, respectively, on the basis of theprocesses #3 and #4, it cannot be recognized that the processes aremigrated. More specifically, migration of the processes does notinfluence other processes. From this point of view, the MID is can beregarded as a kind of identifier added to a process. The number ofprocesses which can send and receive messages according to the aboveprinciple is determined by the bit length of the MID. According to I.363 of the ITU-T standards, since an ID has 10 bits, a maximum of 1024processes can perform communication.

As is apparent from the above description, VPI/VCI is not used toexecute a message division process or a message assembly process forperforming communication between these processes and indicate thedestination of a message. For this reason, The VPI/VCI at each of theinput/output points between the 4:4 bidirectional ATM connection 103 andthe processes may have any value. In consideration of execution ofprocess migration, the VPI/VCI values at the input/output points betweenthe 4:4 bidirectional ATM connection and all the processes arepreferably equal to each other such that communication can be performedwith the same VPI/VCI in the destination to the process is migrated.That is, a message is changed into cells with the same VPI/VCI value inany input/output point, the cells are sent, and the message ispreferably assembled by using the cells received with the same VPI/VCIvalue.

Assume that an adaptation process, called AAL5, in which, when aplurality of messages are simultaneously transferred with the sameVPI/VCI, these messages cannot be correctly assembled, is to be applied.In this case, for example, a process may be identified by using a VCI inplace of an MID such that an n:n bidirectional ATM connection is notpresented by VC switching but is presented by VP switching. In thiscase, the same VPI is desirably used at the input/output points betweenthe ATM connection and the processes. According to this method, amaximum of 2¹⁶ (=65536) can be connected to the same n:n connection.However, when the number of processes connected to the same n:nbidirectional ATM connection excessively increases, the followingproblems are posed. That is, (1) fault location identification, i.e.finding a faulty process, cannot be easily performed when a faultoccurs, (2) a VPI/VCI space is pressed, i.e., a maximum of 255 (when acell format at an interface point is UNI) n:n duplex connectionsdescribed above are set, and (3) since the MID may be uniquely definedin the n:n bidirectional connection, the MID need not be changed at aposition where the n:n bidirectional connection is set, but, since theVPI/VCI is uniquely defined at each interface point, the VPI/VCI mayhave to be changed in migration. For this reason, one of processidentification by the VCI and process identification by the MID isselected depending on an application to be applied. Several serviceswhich can be presented will be described below according to theprinciple of the present invention. In these services, an application inwhich process identification is performed by using the VCI andapplication in which process identification is performed by using theMID are performed.

Note that a protocol in which an information element having the samemean as that of the MID is added to each cell may be defined as a userprotocol on the AAL5. When the user protocol is defined as describedabove, a problem that process identification must be performed by theVPI/VCI in the AAL5 can be solved. In addition, in this case, unlike acase wherein an AAL3/4 is used, a user can set an MID having anarbitrary length. For this reason, the number of processes which performcommunication on one n:n bidirectional connection and are subjected tomigration can be set to be larger than 1024.

A method of realizing an n:n bidirectional connection on the ATMcommunication system, which method is an element playing an importantrole in this embodiment, will be described below.

<Arranging Method on Merging Side of n:n Duplex Connection>

FIG. 3 shows a method of realizing a portion where cells from messagesources sent from the processes in an n:n bidirectional connection aremerged. FIG. 3 shows only a portion to which the present invention isapplied and which is cut from an ATM communication network. Terminals #1to #4 (2011 to 2014) are connected to each other by ATM switch #1 to #3(2021 to 2023) and VC links #1 to #7 (2031 to 2037). The ATMcommunication network is constituted by not only the terminals, the ATMswitches, and the VC links, but also other terminals, ATM switches, andVC links. In addition, the numbers of terminals, ATM switches, and VClinks and the connection state thereof included in the portion to whichthe present invention is applied are not limited to the numbers andstates shown in FIG. 3, as a matter of course. In addition, the ATMswitches and terminals are connected to each other by optical fibers,STP (Sealed Twisted Pair) cables, or UTP (Unsealed Twisted Pair) cables,in a full duplex form, i.e., the ATM switches and terminals areconnected such a manner that transmission and reception can besimultaneously performed. In order to avoid cumbersome illustration, theabove state is not shown in FIG. 3. Assume that the physical links arearranged at positions where at least the VC links #i (203 i) are set.

The processes #i which perform communication by using an n:nbidirectional connection are substantiated by the calculation capabilityof terminals #j to be executed. More specifically, the terminals towhich the present invention is applied can be regarded as a kind of“field”. The processes are mapped on terminals selected according to apredetermined procedure to be executed. As a matter of course, theterminals #j in which the processes #i are executed are not necessarilyfixed. In particular, when process migration is executed, a process #bexecuted on a terminal #a is temporarily stopped, the process #b and itsexecution environment are migrated to a terminal #c. In addition, theprocesses #i need not be present at all the terminal points (positionswhere the processes #i transmits and receives messages) of a set n:nbidirectional connection. The n:n bidirectional connection may be setsuch that terminals are prepared for all the terminals which can beregarded as migrate destinations.

Referring to FIG. 3, in order to structure the “field”, constituted bythe terminals #1 to #4 (2011 to 2014), for performing processes, onlythe VC links #1 to #7 (2031 to 2037) for merging messages in the VClinks set in the ATM communication network are shown. A VC connectionfor merging messages is arranged in such a manner that the VC links #1to #7 (2031 to 2037) are connected to each other by the ATM Switch #1 to#3 (2021 to 2023). In this case, each VC link means a route for a cellwhich is transferred on one physical link by the same VPI and the sameVCI. In addition, chaining of VC links means that a cell transferred onone VC link is sent to another VC link on a predetermined desiredphysical link, and is executed by an ATM switch #i (202 i).

The chaining of VC links executed by the ATM switch #i (202 i) is notlimited to chaining shown in FIG. 3, and the moment the chaining of VClinks is performed, chaining of VC links according to distribution ofmerging traffic (to be described later) is performed. In addition, if anordinary point-point ATM connection is set between the terminal #1(2011) and the terminal #2 (2012), the ATM switch #2 (2022) executeschaining of VC links for constituting the ATM connection simultaneouslywith the above chaining of the VC links executed by the ATM switch #i(202 i).

In each of the ATM switches #i (202 i), when cells are input from the VClinks #i (203 i) allocated to the merging side of an n:n bidirectionalconnection, the cells are transferred to a predetermined one of VC links#j (203 j). For example, in the ATM switch #2 (2022), cells input fromthe VC link #1 (2031) and the VC link #2 (2032) are transferred to theVC link #5 (2035). More specifically, the VPI fields and VCI fields ofall the cells input from the VC link #1 (2031) and the VC link #2 (2032)are rewritten into the VPI/VCI allocated to the VC link #5 (2035), andthe cells are sent to the physical link set in the VC link #5 (2035).

For this reason, each of the ATM switches #i (202 i) has a headerconversion function for rewriting the header portion of a cell inputfrom each physical link and a function of transferring the input cell toa desired physical link. As the ATM switch capable realizing thesefunctions, an ATM switch disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,274,641 can beused. However, since the method of realizing this ATM switch does notinfluence the validity of the present invention, the description of thepresent invention is carried out without being limited to the disclosedATM switch.

As shown in FIG. 3, VC links are chained in a tree structure by the ATMswitches #i (202 i) to constitute the merging side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection. Due to the VC connection having the treestructure, cells sent from the terminals #i (201 i) serving as the“field” for process execution are finally transferred to the root of thetree structure to be merged to the VC link #7 (2037). In this case, inchaining of VC links in each ATM switch, it is required in the ITU-Tstandards that cells from given VC links are input to other VC linkswhile keeping the sending order of the cells on the given VC links,i.e., that the cell order is keep. For this reason, in a merging trafficwhich is finally formed, it should be noted that a cell flow from thesame terminal keeps an order in sending. For this reason, when a cellflow formed by copying the above cell flow to an ATM layer is send toeach terminal, a message included in the cell flow can be correctlyassembled in each terminal.

Note that an order of cells among terminals is not assured in themerging traffic. More specifically, with respect to cells simultaneouslysent from the terminals #1 and #2, depending on the operation timing ofan asynchronous portion of the operation of the ATM switch #2, the cellmay be sent from the terminal #1 first or the cell may be sent from theterminal #2 first.

When the cells sent from respective terminals are merged with eachother, traffics sent from a plurality of terminals are gathered in VClinks near the root of the tree structure. As a result, a bandwidthwhich must be allocated to the VC links increases in width. In order toprevent another communication from being adversely affected, a pluralityof ATM switches must execute a function which is known as UPC (UsageParameter Control) and is to control a bandwidth used in each VC link.

The UPC in each ATM switch may be executed in the following manner inthe example shown in FIG. 3:

-   -   policing performed by input portion: bandwidth T1 of the ATM        switch #2 of the VC link #1,    -   policing performed by input portion: bandwidth T2 of the ATM        switch #2 of the VC link #2,    -   policing performed by input portion: bandwidth T3 of the ATM        switch #3 of the VC link #3, and    -   policing performed by input portion: bandwidth T4 of the ATM        switch #3 of the VC link #4.

As described above, it is the first method of the UPC that a bandwidthused when each terminal sends a cell to the 4:4 bidirectional ATMconnection 103 is restricted in advance. According to this method, apoint at which the UPC is performed is limited to the input portion ofthe ATM switch including the terminal, and other VC links need notexecute the UPC. For this reason, it is satisfactory that the other VClinks only execute CAC (connection acceptance control) based on the sumof bandwidths which are allowed to be used by terminals giving traffics.

The CAC, as well known, is control that the sum of bandwidths given toVC links set on physical links does not exceed the data transmissioncapability of the physical links. Although the CAC can be executed byonly bandwidth management performed by a connection setting function,the UPC generally requires special hardware for executing the UPC. Forthis reason, this method can advantageously reduce the hardware requiredfor the UPC, but each terminal cannot send a cell to a bandwidth T5(T5=T1+T2+T3+T4 in the example described above) allowed to be used by aVC link (VC link #7 in FIG. 3) of the root portion of the mergingtraffic. Therefore, the peak flow rate of a cell which can be sent fromeach terminal is disadvantageously limited to a specific value.

The second method of the UPC executed on each ATM switch is as follows.That is, at the input portion of the ATM switch of VC links constitutingthe merging side of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection, policing isperformed by the bandwidth T5 allowed to be used by the root of themerging side. In this case, each terminal can use up to the bandwidth T5as a peak bandwidth. On the other hand, when a peak is allocated to eachterminal, and when a plurality of terminals simultaneously give cellflows in peak bandwidths, adverse influence such as degradation of celldiscarding rate is given to other connections treated by the ATMswitches #i. In order to prevent this, the UPC must be performed at theinput portion of the ATM switch of VC links constituting the mergingside of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection, or at the output portionof the ATM switch of VC links constituting the merging side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection. According to this method, a peak bandwidthin which each terminal can send a cell can be advantageously made large.On the other hand, UPC must be executed on a transmission path betweenan ATM switch and an ATM switch, and an amount of hardware for executingthe UPC increases. Therefore, the second method has characteristicsopposing the characteristics of the first embodiment.

In each of the first and second embodiments, as the method of the UPC,not only policing (when a bandwidth exceeds a limited band, cells arediscarded until the bandwidth is equal to the limited bandwidth), butalso shaping (when a bandwidth exceeds a limited band, sending of cellsis stopped until the bandwidth is equal to the limited bandwidth) can beused. When shaping is performed, unlike a case wherein policing isperformed, discarding of cells is not caused even if burst signals sentfrom the terminals collide with each other on an ATM switch. However,since a cell buffer must be arranged to temporarily wait sending ofcells, an amount of hardware required for shaping disadvantageouslyincreases.

Note that various methods of arranging the policing and shaping areknown, and an example of the methods is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No.5,274,641. Since this arranging method does not influence the validityof the present invention, the description of the present invention iscarried out without being limited to the arranging method.

As described above, cell flows merged on the merging side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection are transferred to the terminals whilebeing copied. This portion is called a copy side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection.

<Arranging Method on Copy Side of n:n Duplex ATM Connection>

FIG. 4 shows the first arranging method on the copy side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection. FIG. 4 shows the arrangement of the copyside of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection when a “field”, for processexecution, constituted by the terminals #1 to #4 (2011 to 2014) shown inFIG. 3. The terminals and ATM switches in FIG. 4 are the same as thosein FIG. 3, and the same reference numerals as in FIG. 3 denote the sameparts in FIG. 4. VC links in FIG. 4 are different from the VC linksshown in FIG. 3, and reference numerals different those in FIG. 3 areadded to the VC links in FIG. 4. In addition, as in FIG. 3, physicallinks in which the VC links are set are not omitted in FIG. 4 to avoidcumbersome illustration.

The arranging method shown in FIG. 4 is an arranging method which can beapplied when each of the ATM switches #i (202 i) has a known function asa copy function. It is known that an ATM switch with copy function hasvarious arrangements. The present inventor discloses one of thearrangements of ATM switches in Japanese Patent Application No.6-140223. Since this arranging method does not influence the validity ofthe present invention, the description of the present invention iscarried out without being limited to the arranging method.

As in the merging side of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection, VC links#8 to #14 (3011 to 3017) are chained in a tree structure by the ATMswitches #i (202 i). In each ATM switch, a predetermined number ofcopies are formed with respect to cells input from VC links constitutingthe copy side of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection, and the inputcells and the copies of the cells are sent to predetermined VC linkssuch that the cells and copies can be transferred to the terminals #i(201 i) along the tree structure. For example, in the ATM switch #2(2022), one copy of a cell input from the VC link #9 (3012) is formed,the input cell and the copy are sent to the VC link #11 (3014) and theVC link #12 (3015), respectively. As a result, respective cellsconstituting cell flows merged on the merging side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection are transferred to the terminals #i (201 i)realizing the “field” for execution of only one process. Therefore, themerging side shown in FIG. 3 is connected to the copy side shown in FIG.4. More specifically, when the VC link #7 (2037) and the VC link #8(3011) are connected to each other by an arbitrary ATM switch, a desiredn:n bidirectional ATM connection can be realized.

In this case, it should be noted that UPC need not be executed in the VClinks constituting the copy side of the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection. It is satisfactory that only CAC is performed in a bandwidthallocated to the merging traffic at each physical link.

FIG. 5 shows the second arranging method on the copy side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection. FIG. 5 shows the arrangement of the copyside of n:n bidirectional ATM connection when the “field”, for processexecution, constituted by the terminals #1 to #4 (2011 to 2014) shown inFIG. 3. The terminals and ATM switches in FIG. 5 are the same as thosein FIG. 3, and the same reference numerals as in FIG. 3 denote the sameparts in FIG. 5. VC links in FIG. 5 are different from the VC linksshown in FIG. 3 or 4, and reference numerals different those in FIG. 3or 4 are added to the VC links in FIG. 5. In addition, as in FIG. 3,physical links in which the VC links are set are not omitted in FIG. 5to avoid cumbersome illustration.

The arranging method on the copy side shown in FIG. 5 is a method whichcan be applied when each of the ATM switches #i (202 i) does not have acopy function. Since each of the ATM switches #i (202 i) does not have acopy function, each of the terminals #i (201 i) realizes a functionwhich can be substituted for the copy function.

Traffics merged on the merging side are input to a VC link #15 (4011) atany place in the ATM communication network, and are input to the ATMswitch #1 (2021). In the ATM switch #1 (2021), the traffics are outputto a VC link #16 (4012). Subsequently, in the ATM switch #2 (2023), thetraffics are related from the VC link #16 (4012) to a VC link #17(4013). As a result, the merging traffic is given to the terminal #4(2014) first. The terminal #4 (2014) receives the merging traffic andrearranges a message, and, at the same time, loops the merging trafficto input it to a VC link #18 (4014). Similarly, the merging traffic iscaused to sequentially pass through VC links #19 to #24 (4015 to 4020),thereby giving the merging traffic to the terminal #3 (2013), theterminal #2 (2012), the terminal #1 (2011).

In the arranging method shown in FIG. 5, since each of the ATM switches#i (202 i) has no copy function, the terminal #i (201 i) loops themerging traffic to obtain the substitution of the copy function. Forthis reason, the arranging method shown in FIG. 5 has the followingdisadvantages compared with the arranging method shown in FIG. 4. (1)The route of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection is larger, and latencyis degraded. (2) Since the calculation capability required to theterminals #i (201 i) increases, a bandwidth which can be given to themerging traffic (since looping is performed at the terminals #i (201 i),the physical link identical to that of the merging side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection is used) is smaller than that of thearrangement in FIG. 4. (3) Although the n:n bidirectional ATM connectiondoes not operate when a fault occurs at the terminals #i (201 i).However, this arranging method has the advantage that a function such asa copy function which increases a hardware scale is not required, andthe VC links #i (202 i) can be advantageously constituted at low cost.

In each VC link in the arrangement shown in FIG. 5, as in thearrangement shown in FIG. 4, it is satisfactory that only CAC isperformed without performing UPC.

As a matter of course, the copy side of the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection cannot be formed by methods other than the methods shown inFIGS. 4 and 5. The copy side of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection canbe formed by the following manner obtained by combining the formatsshown in FIGS. 4 and 5. That is, in particular, when each ATM switch hasa copy function with a small bandwidth, for example, when each ATMswitch includes a cell switch realizing only a point-point connection,and a copy function for forming a desired number of copies of a cellinput from the cell switch to be returned to the cell switch isconnected to one inlet/outlet pair of the cell switch, as shown in FIG.6, the merged traffic is copied into several branches by one of the copyfunction, and one of the branches is sent to one of the terminalsperforming loopbacking the marged traffic in order to hand anotherterminal sequentially, and another branch is sent to another copyfunction in order to make copy traffics which are sent some terminalsdirectly.

In the setting format of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection describedabove, whether a communication resource can be effectively used islargely dependent on the function of ATM switches constituting the ATMcommunication network and its physical topology. However, from the pointof view for performing the present invention, the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection may be set in any format. Therefore, in this case, assumethat the setting format of the copy side of the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection is determined by a policy decided by the manager of the ATMcommunication network, and the description of the present invention iscarried out without being limited to the setting format.

The above is the description of a method of constituting the n:nbidirectional ATM connection. Note that, in order to cumbersomeillustration, the n:n bidirectional ATM connection is schematicallyshown in FIG. 7. In order to clearly show that the ATM connection is abidirectional connection, two arrows having different directions aredrawn at each input portion of the connection 103.

(Embodiment 2)

The present invention can be applied in not only a situation whereinmessages sent from all processes must be received as shown in FIG. 1,but also a situation a process group for sending messages is differentfrom a process group for receiving the messages. FIG. 8 shows asituation wherein four processes for sending messages and two processesfor receiving the messages are present. Such a situation occurs in acase wherein respective processes specially realize different functions,e.g., so-called server client computing. Other concrete examples whereinsuch a situation occurs will be described later.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 8, four processes (to be referred to assending processes hereinafter) #1 to #4 (7011 to 7014) for sendingmessages are connected to the information input side of a 4:2unidirectional ATM connection 702, and two processes (to be referred toas reception processes hereinafter) #1 (7031) and #2 (7032) areconnected to the information output side of the 4:2 unidirectional ATMconnection 702. As in the embodiment in FIG. 1, the number of processesis not limited to a value in the embodiment shown in FIG. 8. Thisembodiment can be applied when a smaller number of processes or a largernumber of processes are used. In addition, the embodiment is not appliedonly when the number of sending processes is larger than the number ofreception processes, but can be applied when the number of receptionprocesses is larger than the number of sending processes. In this case,four sending processes and two reception processes are set as oneexample, and the following description is carried out. Communicationneed not be performed by an m:n ATM unidirectional connection havingbranches equal to processes in number, an m:n ATM unidirectional havingbranches larger than processes in number can be used as in FIG. 1.

In addition, VPI/VCI values sent from the sending processes to the 4:2unidirectional ATM connection 702 are equal to each other in the sendingprocesses, and VPI/VCI values received by the reception processes from4:2 unidirectional ATM connection 702 are equal to each other in thereception processes. These conditions are desirable to execute processmigration as in FIG. 1. It is to be determined by the nature of anapplication whether the VPI/VCI values used by the sending processes areequal to each other or not or whether the VPI/VCI values used by thereception processes are equal to each other or not.

<Actual Operation of Second Embodiment>

Messages sent from sending processes #i (701 i) to the 4:2unidirectional ATM connection 702 are given to the processes #1 (7031)and #2 (7032) through the 4:2 unidirectional ATM connection 702. As inthe case shown in FIG. 1, in order to perform communication and to use avariable length message, cellulating functions 1035 to 1038 in anadaptation process are arranged between the sending processes and the4:2 unidirectional ATM connection 702, and message assembly functions1045 and 1046 of the adaptation process are arranged between the 4:2unidirectional ATM connection 702 and the reception processes. Functionsrealized by these cellulating functions and message assembly functionsare the same as those in FIG. 1. Therefore, when the MIDs of an AAL3/4are allocated to the sending processes #i (701 i) for sending messagesto the 4:2 unidirectional ATM connection 702, according to the followingmanner, messages sent from the sending processes #i (701 i) can bereceived by reception processes #i (703 i).

The messages sent from the sending processes #i (701 i) are changed intocells by cellulating functions (103 i), and the cells are given to the4:2 unidirectional ATM connection 702. After the 4:2 unidirectional ATMconnection 702 merges the given cells, the 4:2 unidirectional ATMconnection 702 gives the merged cells to message assembly functions 104i. The message assembly functions 104 i reproduces messages withreference to the MIDs belonging to the sending processes, and gives themessages to the corresponding reception processes #i (703 i),respectively. A method of allocating the MIDs to the sending processes#i (701 i) will be described below. Note that when an adaptationprotocol such as an AAL5 which does not include an MID is used, as inthe case shown in FIG. 1, it is considered that an m:n unidirectionalATM connection is presented by a VP switch, a VCI may be used in placeof the MID, or the MID may be defined on the AAL5 as a user protocol asdescribed above.

Therefore, even if migration of a sending process in the sendingprocesses or migration of a reception process in the reception processesoccurs, the occurrence of the process migration can be concealed from aprocess in which migration does not occur, and high-speed processmigration can be realized at low cost.

<Method of Setting m:n Unilateral ATM Connection>

A method of setting an m:n unidirectional ATM connection in an ATMcommunication network can be easily estimated based on the settingmethod on the merging side of the n:n bidirectional ATM connection shownin FIG. 2 and the setting method on the copy side of the n:nbidirectional ATM connection shown in FIGS. 4 to 6. For example, when a“field” where the sending processes #i (701 i) are executed and a“field” where reception processes #j (703 j) are executed are differentterminals, the following operation is preferably performed. That is, theinput terminal of the merging side is connected to the terminal which isthe “field” where the reception processes #i (703 i) are executed, andthe output terminal of the copy side is connected to the terminal whichis the “field” where the reception processes #j (703 j) are executed.When a VC link where a merging traffic is constituted on the mergingside is connected to the root of the copy side, an m:n unidirectionalATM connection capable of performing a desired operation can beobtained.

As in the case wherein UPC is performed in the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection, UPC in the m:n uni-directional ATM connection is preferablyperformed by policing or shaping performed by bandwidths allocated tothe terminals at the output portions of the terminals which are “fields”of sending process execution or policing or shaping performed bybandwidth allocated to merging traffics in the physical links where theconnection on the merging side is set.

In order to avoid cumbersome illustration, the m:n unidirectional ATMconnection is schematically shown in FIG. 9. In order to clearly showthat the ATM connection is a unidirectional connection, arrows havingdirections toward the connection 702 are drawn at the input portions ofthe connection 702, and arrows having direction toward the outputportions of the connection 702 are drawn at the output portions of theconnection 702.

The above description about the basic embodiments of the presentinvention is completed. Services which can be presented to a user of acommunication network will be described below by performing the presentinvention. By this description, the spirit of the present invention willbe clearly shown.

A compromise mobile terminal service on a CATV network which is thefirst application to which the present invention is applied will bedescribed below in detail.

The mobile terminal service, as represented by a mobile telephone or aportable telephone, is a service in which a subscriber can performcommunication while moving. In order to make it possible that asubscriber (mobile terminal) can perform communication while moving, aprocess which is generally called a handover process and in which aradio zone used in communication between the mobile terminal and a fixedterminal is switched according to moving of the mobile terminal. In thiscase, when the subscriber or the mobile terminal is regarded as aprocess in which communication is performed while the subscriber moves,this handover process can be equivalently regarded as a kind of processmigration. According to the present invention, as described later, thehandover process can be simply realized.

FIG. 10 shows the arrangement of a CATV network in which the firstapplication of the present invention is executed. In the CATV network,ATM switches #1 (E011) and #2 (E012) are connected to each other, and aplurality of radio zone forming sections #1-1 to #1-m (E0311 to E031 m)and radio zone forming sections #2-1 to #2-m (E0321 to E032 n) which aremobile terminal interface units are interfaced by passive star opticalcouplers #1 (E021) and #2 (E022). The passive star optical coupler is anoptical part for coupling a plurality of optical fibers so that thelight signal input from one of the optical fibers is uniformlydistributed and output to the remaining optical fibers.

In the CATV network having the arrangement shown in FIG. 10, a backbonenetwork is constituted by ATM switches (E01 i). The CATV network has anobject to interface subscribers at low cost by the passive star opticalcouplers (E02 i) on which information transmission is performed in anATM manner. In a range shown in FIG. 10, the radio zone forming sectionsonly are connected to the passive star optical coupler. However, anuser's local machine called a set top box and a radio zone formingsection may be connected together to a single passive star opticalcoupler. In this manner, it is a great advantage of the ATM CATV networkthat a single passive star optical coupler can be used for variouspurposes.

Each of the radio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 ij) respectivelyconstitute radio zones. When a mobile terminal (E041) using the secondapplication is in any one of the radio zones, the mobile terminal (E041)can perform speech communication or data communication with acommunication destination G0C through a mobile terminal controller E051which can be regarded as a fixed terminal. In this case, a radio channelin the radio zone may be an ATM radio channel disclosed by the presentinventor in Japanese Patent Application No. 5-349634. The followingdescription is carried out with assuming that communication is performedby this radio channel. When an ATM radio channel is used, a mobileterminal can relatively freely use not only a bandwidth of 64 kbps butalso various bandwidths of, e.g., 8 kbps or 128 kbps. As a result, as aservice presented to the mobile terminal (E041), not only a speechcommunication service but also a data transfer service which requires arelatively small number of bits and in which a subscriber holding themobile terminal (E041) notifies another subscriber of a place where thesubscriber holding the mobile terminal (E041) can be presented at lowcost.

In addition, when a mobile terminal in communication is stopped in oneradio zone, and does not move to another radio zone (i.e., no handoverprocess is performed), a data transfer service, such as downloading of afile of a computer, having a high bit rate can also presented. In thiscase, it should be noted that the handover process must be stopped onlywhile wide-band communication is performed. For example, the followingservice can be easily realized. That is, while a user of a mobileterminal performs communication in walking, the user stops when themobile terminal accesses a relatively large file, the user begins towalk when the access to the file is completed.

The radio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 ij) broadcast cell flows (cellflows of downstream links) given from the ATM switches (E01 i) throughthe passive star optical couplers E02 i to the radio zones formed by theradio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 ij), and, at the same time, givescells (cell flows of upper stream links) sent from a mobile terminalbeing present in the radio zone formed the radio zone forming sections#1-j (E03 ij) to the ATM switches through the passive star opticalcouplers E02 i. As disclosed by the present inventor in Japanese PatentApplication No. 5-349634, a carrier frequency for carrying the cellflows of the downstream links is made different from the carrierfrequency for carrying the cell flows of the upper stream links to makefull duplex communication possible. The radio zone forming sections #i-jmay have various arrangements. For example, each radio zone formingsection may have the arrangement disclosed in Japanese PatentApplication No. 5-349634. However, the radio zone forming sectiondescribed in Japanese Patent Application No. 5-349634 is designed to bedirectly connected to an ATM switch, but exchanges cells with an ATMswitch through a passive star optical coupler. When a radio zone formingsection exchanges cells with an ATM switch through a passive staroptical coupler, a function for measuring the distance between the radiozone forming section and the ATM switch, a function of changing a timingfor sending a cell flow, and a access protocol for sharing the upperstream link with other radio zone forming sections must be executed. Itis assumed that the radio zone forming section described in this caseincludes these functions. Since a method of the access protocol in theupper stream link of the passive star optical coupler does not influencethe validity, the description of the present invention is carried outwithout being limited to this method. For example, the scheme disclosedby the present inventor in Japanese Patent Application No. 6-140223 maybe used.

When the mobile terminal E041 tries to start communication, and themobile terminal E041 is present at a radio zone, the mobile terminalE041 outputs a connection setting request to a network side by using thecontrol information channel of the radio zone. In response to theconnection setting request, a required connection is set inside of thecommunication network. The mobile terminal E041 performs communicationby using the connection set up as described above. Upon completion-ofthe communication, the mobile terminal E041 outputs a connection releaserequest to the network side. In response to the connection releaserequest, the connection which has been used by the mobile terminal E041is released. A communication method in the control information channelof the radio zone will be described later.

A handover process is controlled by the mobile terminal controller(E051) connected to the ATM switch #1 (E011). This mobile terminalcontroller (E051), in the handover process, has (a) a connectionfunction for controlling the ATM switches #1 (E011) and #2 (E012) to setan n:m unidirectional ATM connection (e.g., G03) having the mobileterminal controller (E051) as an input side terminal point and m radiozone forming sections of the radio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 il)serving as the mobile terminal interface units as output side terminalpoints, and an m:n unidirectional ATM connection (e.g., G04) having mradio zone forming sections of the radio zone forming sections #1-j (E03il) as input side terminal points, and the mobile terminal controller(E051) which is n fixed terminal as an output terminal point, and (2) aconnection identifier allocating function for allocating the sameconnection identifier for identification of the m input side terminalsof the n:m unidirectional ATM connection and identification of the moutput side terminals of the m:n unidirectional ATM connection. In theexample shown in FIG. 12, only the mobile terminal controller (E051) isused, and n=1. However, when n=2 or more, the present invention can beapplied. When viewing from these ATM connections, the mobile terminalcontroller can be regarded as a kind of a fixed terminal.

When an ATM switch receives a connection setting request from a mobileterminal, the ATM switch sets an ATM connection (to be described later)between the mobile terminal controller E051 and each of the radio zoneforming sections E03 ij. Although a connection must be reformed duringcommunication by a mobile terminal, this sends a connection reformrequest toward an ATM switch.

<Method of Realizing Handover Process>

A method of realizing a handover process by the mobile terminalcontroller E051, the ATM switches E01 i, and the radio zone formingsections E03 ij in the second application of the present invention willbe described below.

Before interaction among the mobile terminal controller E051, the ATMswitches E01 i, and the radio zone forming sections E03 ij is actuallydescribed, a method of setting a radio zone for realizing the handoverprocess will be described below.

As shown in FIG. 11, a CATV network company installs the radio zonesalong roads in a city area where the company performs services in such amanner the radio zones partially overlap on each other. At this time,the frequencies of radio waves used in the overlapping portions of theradio zones are set to be different from each other. Note that radiozones (called radio clusters) formed by the radio zone forming sectionsconnected to one passive star optical coupler are continuously arrangedalong the roads as shown in FIG. 11. The diameter of each of these radiozones is set to be small, e.g., 100 m, to obtain high-speed datatransmission at low cost in the radio zone.

On the other hand, the mobile terminal always monitors frequencies usedas downstream links in the CATV network, and operates to reproduceinformation by using, of these frequencies, a reception radio wave of areception having the highest reception intensity. A radio wave whichtransfer information of a downstream link is monitored to automaticallyselect a radio zone. In addition, a handover process can be realized atlow cost by setting a connection in the following manner.

In this case, the pairs of frequencies of the downstream links and theupper stream links are not changed. More specifically, is should benoted that the following relationship is fixed in the CATV network. Thatis an upper stream link in the radio zone in which a downstream link hasa frequency of fd1 is fu1, and a down stream link in the radio zone inwhich a downstream link has a frequency of fd2 is fu2. Therefore, whenthe frequency of the downstream link used by the mobile terminal isdetermined, the frequency of the upper stream link can be automaticallydetermined, and information can be sent to the radio zone.

These radio zones are not necessarily arranged along the roads in thecity area. For example, a radio zone is preferably installed at adangerous place (e.g., pond) in the city area. A parent gives his/herchild a radio terminal, and an alarm is given to the parent when thechild gets close to a dangerous place while the child has fun in thecity area. In addition, a radio zone may be installed the rooms such asa living room and dining room of the house of each subscriber. It isassumed that a CATV network manager installs a radio zone at a positionwhere a subscriber wants to use the above service.

Sincerely, FIG. 12 shows connections set between the mobile terminalcontroller E051 and each of the radio zone forming sections E03 ij whena mobile terminal service is executed. These connections are set insidethe ATM communication network in calling from the mobile terminal orcall arriving to the mobile terminal. Although data transfer routes arealso required in calling from each mobile terminal or call arriving fromeach mobile terminal, the data transfer routes will be described later.In order to avoid cumbersome illustration, these routes are omitted inFIG. 12. In addition, when a mobile terminal performs calling, or callarriving to mobile terminal is received, a specific radio zone in whichthe mobile terminal is located must be notified to the network side.This will be described below.

In calling from the mobile terminal E041 or call arriving to the mobileterminal E041, 1:m unidirectional ATM connections G03 and G0A and m:1unidirectional ATM connections G04 and G09 are set on each of thepassive star optical couplers E02 i, and these connections are connectedto the mobile terminal controller E041 by 1:1 unidirectional ATMconnections G01, G02, G05, G06, G07, and G08.

A 1:1 bidirectional ATM connection G0B is set between a communicationdestination G0C of the mobile terminal and the mobile terminalcontroller E051. In this case, it is assumed that the communicationdestination G0C of the mobile terminal does not move and is seamlesslyconnected to the mobile terminal controller E051 by an ordinary ATMconnection. When the communication destination G0C of the mobileterminal is a mobile terminal, as in the case shown in FIG. 12, a 1:munidirectional ATM connection and an m:1 unidirectional ATM connectionare set toward the mobile terminal serving as the communicationdestination, and these connections are connected to the mobile terminalcontroller E041 by the 1:1 unidirectional ATM connection.

The 1:m unidirectional ATM connection G03 and the m:1 unidirectional ATMconnection G04 is used to realize a handover process with respect tomoving the mobile terminal E041 between the radio zones formed by theradio zone forming sections E031 j connected to the same passive staroptical coupler, i.e., in a radio cluster.

The 1:m unidirectional ATM connections G04 and G0A are spontaneously setwhen ATM connections are set in the passive star optical coupler by thenature of the passive star optical coupler. In the radio zones formed bythe radio zone forming sections E031 j connected to the same passivestar optical coupler, cells which treats the same information can bereceived by the same VPI/VCI. Therefore, as described above, the mobileterminal E041 operates to reproduce information on the basis of areception radio wave having the highest response intensity, and theradio zones are arranged to geographically overlap. For this reason,even if the mobile terminal moves between the radio zones, in the sameradio cluster, frame synchronization and cell synchronization arereleased when the reception frequency is changed by moving the radiozones. Only when an operation for reestablish the frame synchronizationand cell synchronization, mobile terminal E041 can continuecommunication. That is, an interrupt time of the reception informationis short even if the radio zones are changed.

At this time, it should be noted that the VPI/VCI of extracted cellsneed not be changed. When information such as voice information whoseinterrupt can be interpolated is used, the interrupt time of thereception information can be shorter than a time which can beinterpolated or neglected by human being, communication can be continuedwithout interrupting a connection. In an ATM radio channel disclosed inJapanese Patent Application No. 5-349634, the interrupt time of radioinformation in the radio channel is a time required to establish framesynchronization and cell synchronization. When a frame structure isproperly selected by shortening the overhead interval of the frames ofthe radio channel, the interrupt time of the reception information canbe suppressed with in a required range. In this case, when communicationin which the frame synchronization and cell synchronization between theradio zones are not allowed to be reestablished is to be performed, itis apparent that communication is preferably performed when a user doesnot move between the radio zones, i.e., when a user stops. Since ATMradio zones are used, when a service in which a user performs speechcommunication with walking, receives a transferred file with stopping,and performs speech communication again with walking is performed, itshould be noted that a simple method in which a new ATM connectionhaving a bandwidth required to perform file transfer is set isperformed.

When a mobile terminal sends information in the radio cluster, a cell ispreferably sent by a simply allocated VPI/VCI. The sent cell isnaturally transferred to a portion of a desired communicationdestination through the 1:1 unidirectional ATM connection G02 by theoperation of the m:1 unidirectional ATM connection G04.

By realizing only the above processes, a switching process of the radiozones performed when a handover process in the radio cluster, i.e., whena mobile terminal moves from a radio zone to another radio zone in thesame radio cluster. In this case, when the handover process is performedin only a single radio cluster, the mobile terminal controller E051 isnot required. The 1:1 unidirectional ATM connections G01 and G02 arepreferably connected to the 1:1 bidirectional ATM connection G0B for thecommunication destination G0C.

However, in order to realize relatively high speed communication at lowcost, the diameter of a radio zone formed by radio zone forming sectionsE03 ij is desirably small, i.e., 100 m. For this reason, a radio clusterconstituted by one passive star optical coupler can not presentcompromise mobile terminal service to the entire area required bysubscribers of the CATV network. Therefore, a handover process between aplurality of radio clusters must be performed. The mobile terminalcontroller E051 is arranged to perform the handover process between theplurality of radio clusters.

When calling to a radio terminal or call arriving to the radio terminaloccurs, the network sets the connection shown in FIG. 12 in a givenradio cluster in which the radio terminal is present, and, at the sametime, the same connection as described above is set in a radio clusteradjacent to the given radio cluster. In FIG. 12, the connections G03 andG04 correspond to the given radio cluster in which the radio terminal iscurrently present. On the other hand, the ATM connections G09 and G0Acorrespond to the radio cluster adjacent to the given radio cluster.

The mobile terminal controller E051 chains the connection on the radiocluster in which the mobile terminal is present to the connection to thecommunication destination, and, at the same time, chains the connectionset on the radio cluster adjacent to the radio cluster to the connectionto the communication destination. More specifically, in the exampleshown in FIG. 12, cell flows given from the connection G0B to the mobileterminal controller E051 are copied, and the obtained copies are givento the connections G01 and G05. At the same time, the cell flows givenfrom the connection G02 and G06 are merged and given to the connectionG0B. In this manner, a cell flow sent from the communication destinationG0C is given to the radio cluster in which the mobile terminal E041 ispresent and a cluster adjacent to the radio cluster. For this reason,even if the mobile terminal E041 is given to the radio cluster, when themobile terminal reproduces information on the basis of a radio wavehaving the highest intensity, the reception information can be switchedby the same process as that in which reception information is switchedwhile the radio terminal moves between the radio zones in the same radiocluster. In addition, when the mobile terminal E041 is currently presentin a given radio cluster or a radio cluster adjacent to the givencluster, a cell sent from the mobile terminal E041 is given to thecommunication destination. As a result, a handover process between theradio clusters can be performed by the same process as the handoverprocess between the radio zones in the radio cluster.

Note that when the handover process between the radio clusters occurs,the adjacent radio cluster is changed. More specifically, a radiocluster which is not the adjacent cluster becomes the adjacent radiocluster, or a radio cluster which is regarded as the adjacent radiocluster becomes a radio cluster which is not adjacent.

In the radio cluster which is newly used as the adjacent cluster, theconnection shown in FIG. 12 is set for a new handover process. In eachradio zone in the new adjacent radio cluster, the same VPI/VCI as thatused in another radio cluster is used as matter of course. Thisconnection setting is requested by the mobile terminal controller E051to the communication network. In order to realize this, the position ofthe mobile terminal must be notified to the mobile terminal controllerE051. For this purpose, a 1:1 bidirectional connection is set betweenthe mobile terminal controller E051 and each of the radio zone formingsections E03 ij, and each radio zone forming section may notify themobile terminal controller E051 of the position of the radio terminal,or the following method may be used. That is, as will be describedlater, each radio zone forming section broadcasts an identifierallocated to the radio zone forming section to a radio zone formed bythe radio zone forming section, an identifier allocated to the radiozone is received by the mobile terminal E041, and the identifier isnotified to the mobile terminal controller E051.

Connections set on a radio cluster which has been an adjacent radiocluster are preferably released for effective used of a communicationbandwidth. On the other hand, since a probability that the mobileterminal E041 returns to the same radio cluster is high, in order toreduce a process amount related to a handover process, it is preferredthat the connections remain to be released. It is determined by thebehavior pattern of a human being having the mobile terminal E041whether these connections are released or reduced. However, if theconnections are released, the mobile terminal controller E051 requeststhe network to release the connections.

As described above, since connection setting/release according to ahandover process can be performed after the mobile terminal movesbetween radio clusters, the above described method can advantageouslyperform a high-speed handover process with a low-cost structure.

When the CATV network according to the present invention is used, themobile terminal service must perform a process which is different fromcommunication performed by an ordinary ATM connection and is related tothe special connection described above. For this reason, the mobileterminal service is regarded as an optional service, i.e., a servicewhich need not be performed. In this case, as in a conventional ATMcommunication system as shown in FIG. 12, a connection setting sectionG0D may be arranged, and the mobile terminal controller E051 may requestthe connection setting section G0D to perform connection settingaccording to the mobile terminal.

The connection setting section G0D receives a request from the mobileterminal controller E051 or a request of another ordinary ATM connectionsetting and controls the ATM switches E011 and E012 in the ATMcommunication system, thereby setting the ATM connection. From thispoint of view, the mobile terminal controller E051 is added to the ATMcommunication system, and functions as a fixed terminal for realizing akind of service function for realizing a special service (mobileterminal, in this case). As described above, since the special serviceis realized as the fixed terminal, a packaging method which is advantagein cost and in which the special service can be realized with a desiredATM communication network by only connecting the fixed terminal to theATM switch can be obtained.

<Schematic Procedure of Handover Process>

The schematic procedure of the handover process described above will bedescribed below with reference to FIG. 13. When a mobile terminal movesbetween radio clusters, for a handover process between the radioclusters, the mobile terminal controller E051 requests an n:munidirectional ATM connection and an m:n unidirectional ATM connectionto be set (step S21). At this time, the connection setting section (G0D)of the ATM communication network sets requested connections whileallocating the same connection identifiers (VPI/VCI in this example) toidentify m input side terminal points of the requested n:munidirectional ATM connection and identify m output terminal side endterminals of the m:n unidirectional ATM connection (step S22). In thismanner, preparation for the handover process of the mobile terminal E041between the radio clusters is completed. Even if the mobile terminalE041 is subjected to a handover process between the radio clusters, anATM connection used in communication with the mobile terminal controllerE051 can be specified by the VPI/VCI above described, thereby realizingthe handover process (step S23).

FIG. 14 shows the arrangement of the mobile terminal controller E051 forrealizing the handover process described above. The mobile terminalcontroller E051 is constituted by a physical layer section H01, a payload cipher section H02, a pay load decoding section H03, a subscribercipher key table H04, a control cell branch/insert section H05, aVPI/VCI rewriting section H06, a copy tag adding section H08, a copybuffer H07, and a control processor H09.

The mobile terminal controller E051 has a function of chainingconnections set to radio clusters to a connection set to thecommunication destination of a mobile terminal, a function of realizinga handover process between the radio clusters, and a cipher function ofthe pay load portion of a cell to improve security which is alwaysproblem in a mobile terminal service. These functions are sequentiallydescribed below.

The function of chaining the connections set to the radio clusters tothe connection set to the communication destination of the mobileterminal is described first. This function is constituted by a functionof copying a cell given from the communication destination of the mobileterminal to send the copy to the radio cluster in which the mobileterminal is present and to an adjacent radio cluster, and a function oftransferring the cell given from the mobile terminal to thecommunication destination.

In this embodiment, since the mobile terminal controller E051 isconnected to the ATM switch #1 (E011) by a physical link, an ATMconnection set to execute the mobile terminal service must be designedto identify the mobile terminal controller E051. More specifically, theinterface points between the mobile terminal controller E051 and the ATMswitch #1 (E011), different VPI/VCIs are added. The mobile terminalcontroller E051 can identify a radio cluster to which a cell is sentwhen the cell is sent to a specific VPI/VCI. In addition, in order tocause the mobile terminal controller E051 to present a mobile terminalservice to a plurality of mobile terminals at once, the mobile terminalcontroller E051 must be able to identify ATM connections requested tomobile terminals. More specifically, the mobile terminal controller E051can identify a mobile terminal to which a cell is sent when the cell issent to a specific VPI/VCI. For this reason, an identifier foridentifying a mobile terminal serving as a process migrated in the firstapplication is not the MID serving as a process identifier used in theATM-SYSTEM shown in FIG. 1 but the VPI/VCI serving as a connectionidentifier.

In order to chain connections set to the radio clusters to a connectionset to the communication destination, the following process ispreferably performed.

A function of copying a cell received from the communication destinationof the mobile terminal to send the copy to a radio cluster in which themobile terminal is present and the adjacent radio cluster is describedfirst. As will be described below, this function is realized by a cellcopy function of forming a plurality of cell flows.

Cell flows given from the communication destination G0C through theconnection G0B are given to the reception side of the physical layersection H01 through an ATM switch. The physical layer section H01performs a frame synchronization process and a cell synchronizationprocess to a bit stream given from the ATM switch to reproduce cellflows. The cell flows are given to the copy tag adding section H08through the pay load decoding section H03 and the control cellbranch/insert section H05. The copy tag adding section H08 refers to theVPI/VCIs of the given cell flows to add information called a copy tag tothe cells, and gives the cells to the copy buffer H07. In each copy tag,information indicating a connection to which the cell belongs and thenumber of copies to be formed. The former is called a copy connectionidentification, and the later is called the number of copies. Forexample, in the connection arrangement shown in FIG. 12, cells inputfrom the connection G0B is transferred to the connection G01 and theconnection G05, and the number of copies is set to be 2. The copyconnection identification is uniquely added to each connection processedby the mobile terminal controller E051 to identify communication betweenthe mobile terminal E041 and the communication destination G0C. Forexample, in order to identify this connection, value 1 is set as thevalue of the copy connection identification.

The copy buffer H07 refers to the number of input cells, forms copieswhich is equal in number to the number of copies, gives the copies tothe VPI/VCI rewriting section H06. In this case, the copy buffer H07writes sequence numbers in a field in which the number of copies iswritten in the sending order of the copies of the same cell. Thissequence numbers are called copy numbers. For example, a cell input whenthe number of copies=4 is output from the copy buffer H07 four times. Atthis time, the copy numbers of the output copied cells are changed one,two, three four. This copy number are used to select a connection towhich the copied cells are sent in the VPI/VCI rewriting section H06.Note that a field for copy connection identification is transparentlyoutput in the copy buffer H07.

The cells output from the copy buffer H07 are input to the VPI/VCIrewriting section H06. The VPI/VCI rewriting section H06 refers to theconnection identification and the copy numbers to identify a connectionto which the cells are to be sent. The VPI/VCI rewriting section H06rewrites the VPI/VCI fields of the cells with VPI/VCI values foridentify the connection, deletes the copy tags, and gives the cells tothe transmission side of the physical layer section H01 through thecontrol cell branch/insert section H05 and the pay load cipher sectionH02. When a plurality of cells from the same cell source having VPI/VCIswhich can be respectively transferred to desired clusters are sent tothe ATM switch, routing of these cells in the ATM switch can beperformed, and these cells are transferred to the desired clusters as amatter of course. For example, in the connection arrangement shown inFIG. 12, since the copy connection identification is 1, it can berecognized that the cells are to be transferred to the connection G01 orG05. For example, if a cell having copy number 1 and a cell having copynumber 2 are to be sent to the connections G01 and G05, respectively,the VPI/VCI of the cell having the copy connection identification of 1and copy number 1 is rewritten with a value for identifying theconnection G01, and the VPI/VCI of the cell having the copy connectionidentification of 1 and copy number 2 is rewritten with a value foridentifying the connection G05.

Note that a VPI/VCI added to other terminal points of these connections,i.e., the same VPI/VCI allocated to each mobile terminal and used in allthe radio zones to simplify the handover process and the VPI/VCI of acell sent from the VPI/VCI rewriting section H06 have different values,respectively. The VPI/VCIs at terminal points on the radio zone sides ofthese connections are sent from an ATM switch to a passive star opticalcoupler or rewritten by a radio zone forming section.

With the above operation, cells sent from the communication destinationG0C are transferred to desired radio clusters, and the cells havingdesired VPI/VCIs are given to the mobile terminal E041.

The cells sent from mobile terminals, as described above, are given tothe mobile terminal controller E051 through the m:1 unidirectional ATMconnection. At this time, it is noticed that a connection is set such amanner that a cell sent from a specific mobile terminal can beidentified by the VPI/VCIs of the cells sent from the mobile terminalsin the input portion of the mobile terminal controller E051. In thiscase, the mobile terminal controller E051 treats the input cells asdescribed above, the cells can be transferred from the connections setin the radio clusters to a connection set to the communicationdestination of the mobile terminal.

A cell input from the connection G01 or G06, like the cell input fromthe connection G0B, is input to the copy tag adding section H08 throughthe physical layer section H01, the pay load decoding section H03, andthe control cell branch/insert section H05. The copy tag adding sectionrefers to the VPI/VCI allocated to the connection G02 or G06, adds acopy tag to the cell, and transfers the cell to the copy buffer H07. Inthis case, the number of copies in the copy tag may be 1. As a copyconnection identification, the same value is allocated to theconnections G02 and G06. Since the number of copies of the cellbelonging to the connection G02 or G06 is set to be 1, the copy bufferH07 gives only one of the cells each having copy number 1 to the VPI/VCIrewriting section H06.

When the VPI/VCI rewriting section H06 refers to the copy identificationand the copy number and recognizes that the input cell is a cellbelonging to the connection G02 or G06, the VPI/VCI rewriting sectionH06 rewrites the VPI/VCI of the cell with the VPI/VCI allocated to theconnection G0B, and outputs the cell to the ATM switch through thecontrol cell branch/insert section H05, the pay load cipher section H02,and the physical layer section H01. When the value of the VPI/VCI isequal to that allocated to the connection G0B, the ATM communicationnetwork transfers the cell to the communication destination G0C. Asdescribed above, even if the mobile terminal E041 is present in anycluster, the cell sent from the mobile terminal is transferred to adesired communication destination.

When the two operations described above, i.e., an operation oftransferring a cell from a communication destination to desired radioclusters and an operation of transferring the cell in the desired radioclusters to a desired communication destination, are performed, chainingbetween connections set to the radio clusters and a connection set tothe communication destination of the mobile terminal can be realized.

The function of realizing an handover process between radio clustersperformed in the mobile terminal controller E051 will be described belowin detail.

As described above, connections are set in a radio cluster in which amobile terminal is present and in a radio terminal adjacent to the radioterminal for a handover process. When the request of the handoverprocess is generated, i.e., when the radio cluster in which the mobileterminal changes, a connection is set in a radio cluster adjacent to thenew radio cluster for a new handover process. In order to realize thesimple handover process described above, a radio cluster in which themobile terminal must be recognized, and the communication network isrequested to set a connection. In order to achieve these objects, thefunction of the handover process performed by the mobile terminalcontroller E051 is used. The capability of calculation for the handoverprocess is presented by the control cell branch/insert section H05 andthe VPI/VCI rewriting section H06.

FIG. 15 shows a connection set between the radio zone forming sections#1-j (E03 ij) and the mobile terminal controller E051 in advance toperform mobile terminal control such as a handover process. A connectionof such type is called a movement control connection. FIG. 15 shows onlya movement control connection related to the radio zone forming section#i-j belonging to one radio cluster.

A 1:m unidirectional ATM connection I01 and a m:1 unidirectional ATMconnection I02 are arranged as movement control connections between themobile terminal controller E051 and the radio zone forming sections #1-j(E03 ij) in each radio cluster. When information is transferred from theradio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 ij) to the mobile terminalcontroller E051, the m:1 unidirectional ATM connection I02 is used; andwhen information is transferred from the mobile terminal controller E051to the radio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 ij), the 1:m unidirectionalATM connection I01.

A VPI/VCI is added to each cluster between the mobile terminalcontroller E051 and an ATM switch to identify a movement controlconnection related to a specific radio cluster. The same VPI/VCI isgiven to the 1:m unidirectional ATM connection I01 and the m:1unidirectional ATM connection I02 which constitute the mobile controlconnection related to one radio cluster. More specifically, when a cellis to be transferred to the radio cluster of the sender of the inputcell, a cell having the same value as that of the VPI/VCI of the inputcell is given to the movement control connection.

In communication between the radio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 ij)and the mobile terminal controller E051, an AAL3 is used as anadaptation layer to obtain a variable length message. For this purpose,an MID is allocated to each of the radio zone forming sections E03 ij.

Each radio zone forming section divides a messages into cells by usingthe allocated MID when the message is to be transferred to the radiozone forming sections E03 ij. Thereafter, the VPI/VCI values of thesecells are sent as VPI/VCI values allocated to the connection 102 betweenthe radio zone forming sections and a passive star optical coupler. As aresult, with the operation of the connection I02, these cells are guidedto the mobile terminal controller E051. In the mobile terminalcontroller E051, a message is assembled by cell flows transferred fromthe radio clusters with reference to the MIDs. In this manner, the radiocluster which sends a message assembled with reference to the VPI/VCIand the radio cluster which sends a message assembled with reference tothe MID are identified by the radio zone forming section.

On the other hand, when the mobile terminal controller E051 sends amessage of one of the radio zone forming sections E03 ij, the mobileterminal controller E051 divides the message into cells by an MIDallocated to the radio zone forming section E03 ij to which the cellsare to be sent. Thereafter, the VPI/VCI values of the cells are sent asVPI/VCIs allocated to the connection I01 between the mobile terminalcontroller E051 and the ATM switch. As a result, with the operation ofthe connection I01, these cells are guided to the radio zone formingsections E03 ij in the same radio cluster. The radio zone formingsection E03 ij extracts only cells each having the same MID as thatallocated to the radio zone forming section E03 ij to assemble amessage.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, a message is changed into cells by anMID allocated to a sender. However, even if the mobile terminalcontroller E051 changes the message into cells by the MID allocated to adestination, a process for sanding the message to the connection I01 isonly the mobile terminal controller. For this reason, it should be notedthat normal message assembly can be performed by the radio zone formingsections E03 ij without simultaneously changing different messages intocells by the same MID. When packaging is performed as described above,it can be advantageously determined with reference to only an MIDwhether a message is a message sent to the radio zone forming section,and an unnecessary message does not have to be assembled.

In the mobile terminal controller E051, a cell belonging to theconnection I02 is transferred to the control cell branch/insert sectionH05 through the physical layer section H01 and the pay load decodingsection H03. In the control cell branch/insert section H05, a cell givenfrom a radio cluster as information for controlling a mobile terminal isbranched to the control processor H09. The branching conditions in thecontrol cell branch/insert section H05 are as follows. That is, thecontrol cell branch/insert section H05 refers to the VPI/VCI of the cellinput from the pay load cipher section H02 side, and branches cellshaving VPI/VCIs allocated to movement control connections set betweenthe mobile terminal controller E051 and the ATM switch to the controlprocessor H09.

A cell belonging to the 1:m unidirectional ATM connection I01 istransferred in the mobile terminal controller E051 in the followingmanner. The control processor H09 forms a control message sent to amobile cluster such as a cell belonging to the connection I01, themessage is divided into cells by an MID allocated to a radio zoneforming section serving as a destination, and a VPI/VCI for transferringthe cells to a radio cluster serving as a destination is written in theheader portion of each cell obtained by dividing the message, therebygiving the cells to the control cell branch/insert section H05. Thecontrol cell branch/insert section H05 replaces an empty cell in thecell slow toward the physical layer section H01 with the cells givenfrom the control processor H09, and the cells are sent to the physicallayer section H01 through the pay load cipher section H02. In thismanner, the cells formed by the control message formed by the controlprocessor H09 are sent from the mobile terminal controller.

Note that the control processor H09 forms an ATM connection settingrequest for realizing the mobile terminal service. Therefore, like themobile terminal connection described above, cells required forcommunication with a connection setting section G09D are alsobranched/inserted in the control cell branch/insert section H05.

FIG. 16 is a message sequence diagram in which messages exchanged amongthe mobile terminal E041, the radio zone forming sections E03 ij, andthe mobile terminal controller E051 are time-serially arranged. FIG. 16shows a case wherein connection setting is performed when the mobileterminal E041 is present of the radio zone of the radio zone formingsection #1-2, and, thereafter, the mobile terminal E041 moves to theradio zone of the radio zone forming section #1-1.

Like the radio zone forming section described by the present inventor inJapanese Patent Application No. 5-349634, the radio zone formingsections E03 ij according to this embodiment broadcasts identifiersgiven to the radio zones of the radio zone forming sections E03 ij tothe radio zones at predetermined time intervals (zone arriving messagesJ01, J02, J06, and J09). As described above, since ATM cells aretransferred on the radio channels in a radio zone, as described by thepresent inventor in Japanese Patent Application No. 5-349634, the zonearriving messages may be transferred as one type of broadcast cellsdefined as cells each having a predetermined VPI/VCI. In addition, theradio zone identifier may be a node number added to a radio zone formingsection. The mobile terminal controller E051 has a table for holding therelationship between the radio zone identifiers and the positions of theradio zone identifiers on an actual map. This table is maintained andupdated by a maintenance person of a CATV network when the radio zoneforming sections are installed.

When a power is turned on, the mobile terminal E041 sequentially scansfrequencies used as downstream links of the radio zones first to measurethe intensities of electric field of the frequencies. Thereafter, areception frequency is fixed to a frequency at which a radio wave havingthe highest intensity of electric field, and a bit stream is reproducedon the basis of the radio wave. Thereafter, frame synchronization andcell synchronization are established for the bit stream to reproducecell flows on the downstream links. The mobile terminal E041 waits forthe zone arriving message which appears on the downstream links.

When the mobile terminal E041 receives the zone arriving messageappearing on the downstream links, it is regarded that the mobileterminal E041 can receive a movement service. When the user of themobile terminal E041 begins to perform communication by using a newmobile terminal, the mobile terminal E041 sends a movement servicerequest message (J03) in response to an instruction of a user. Themobile terminal sends the movement service request message (J03) at theupper stream link frequency of the radio zone to which the mobileterminal belongs by a broadcast cell, and gives the movement servicerequest message (J03) to the radio zone forming section #1-2. Theradio-zone forming section #1-2 buries the movement service requestmessage in the pay load portion of an AAL3 on the basis of an MIDallocated to the radio zone forming section #1-2 to change the movementservice request message into cells, and transfers the cells to themobile terminal controller through the connection I02 (J03′). The mobileterminal controller E051 interprets the received movement servicerequest message to obtain the layer 3 address of a point at whichconnection setting must be performed, and a connection setting request(J04) is sent to the connection setting section G0D to performconnection setting to the ATM communication network. Connectionsrequested to be set at this time, as is apparent from the operation ofthe handover process described above, a connection between thecommunication destination and the mobile terminal controller, aconnection between the mobile terminal controller and a radio cluster inwhich the mobile terminal is present, and a connection between a clusteradjacent to the radio cluster in which the mobile terminal is presentand the mobile terminal controller.

According to the present invention, in order to integrate the VPI/VCIbetween an ATM switch and a passive star optical coupler in connectionsset for the movement service in the radio cluster in which the radioterminal is present and the radio cluster adjacent to the radio cluster,the connection setting section G0D must operate such that a serviceexceeding Q. 2931 protocol as described by the present inventor inJapanese Patent Application No. 5-349436. In order to realize theconnection setting, a connection setting section G0E has a process IDallocating section G0E′. The process ID used in this case is anidentifier, i.e., VPI/VCI, for identifying a radio terminal in eachradio zone.

In Q. 2931 protocol at present, a connection can not be set byspecifying the VPI/VCI. If Q. 2931 is modified in future such that aconnection can be set by specifying the VPI/VCI, a connection forrealizing a simple handover process according to the present inventioncan be set by Q. 2931 protocol. For this reason, when E. 164 address isallocated to the mobile terminal controller, each radio cluster, and thecommunication destination, the connection setting section G0D can alsouse the connection set by Q. 2931 of the host ATM communication networkas a movement service.

Upon completion of required connection setting, on the basis ofinformation returned from the connection setting section G0D and relatedto the set connection, the mobile terminal controller E051 rewrites thetable included in the copy tag adding section H08 and the VPI/VCIrewriting section H06 such that the set connections are chained asdescribed above. Thereafter, in order to notify the mobile terminal E041that connection setting is completed, the mobile terminal controllerE051 buries a broadcast cell in the information portion of the AAL3 totransfer a movement acknowledge message (J05) changed into cells againto the radio zone forming section #1-2 through the 1:m unidirectionalATM connection I01.

When the radio zone forming section #1-2 receives the movementacknowledge message from the mobile terminal controller E051, the radiozone forming section #1-2 reproduces a broadcast cell on the basis ofthe message to broadcast the broadcast cell to a radio zone formed bythe radio zone forming section #1-2.

In preparation for a case wherein a mobile terminal moves between radiozones or radio clusters after movement service request message is sent,the mobile terminal response message may be transferred to all the radiozone forming sections of a radio cluster in which the mobile terminal ispresent when the movement service request message is sent and a radiocluster adjacent to the radio cluster. Transferring to all the radiozone forming sections may be performed such a manner that the samemovement service response message is sent by sequentially using MIDsallocated to the radio zones, or MIDs for all-sender-point broadcast maybe defined on a 1:m ATM connection. In each radio zone forming section,a cell having an MID for all-sender-point broadcast is assembled as amessage, and a process according to the meaning of the message isperformed. For example, when a movement service response message isused, the radio zone forming section broadcasts a broadcast cellincluded in the message to a radio channel formed by the radio zoneforming section.

When the mobile terminal E041 receives movement service response message(J05′), the mobile terminal E041 starts communication with acommunication destination by using the setting connection. When themobile terminal E041 receives a zone arriving message (J06) sent fromthe radio zone forming section #1-2 during the communication with thecommunication destination, the mobile terminal E041 may return existencearriving message (J07). The two types of messages may be broadcastcells.

When the mobile terminal moves from the radio zone formed by radio zoneforming section #1-2 to the radio zone formed by the radio zone formingsection #1-1, the following occurs.

The intensity of electric field of a radio wave sent from the radio zoneforming section #1-2 at the mobile terminal decreases. As a result,according to an intensity of electric field measurement of a frequencywhich is always performed by the radio terminal and used as a downstreamradio channel, the intensity of the frequency sent from the radio zoneforming section #1-2 is lager than each of the other frequencies. Inthis state, the mobile terminal E041 changes a reception frequency toreproduce a bit stream on the basis of a frequency which can be receivedat the highest intensity. As a result, frame synchronization and cellsynchronization are temporarily released, and frame/cell synchronizationis reestablished. As described above, according to the presentinvention, since a connection with the communication destination is setin the adjacent radio zone or the adjacent radio cluster in advance withthe same VPI/VCI, communication with the communication destination canbe restarted after the cell synchronization can be reestablished.

When not only the reception intensity measurement for the receptionfrequencies, but also an operation in which frame/cell synchronizationat the reception frequencies is always established is performed, a timein which communication cannot be performed by a handover process can befurther shortened. In this case, frame synchronization and cellsynchronization must be performed to a plurality of radio channels. Forthis reason, an amount of hardware of the mobile terminal increases, andthe power consumption of the mobile terminal is disadvantageouslyincreases. It should be determined in consideration of characteristicsrequired to the system whether frame synchronization and cellsynchronization are simultaneously established at a plurality ofreception frequencies.

After a short time, a zone arriving message (J09) sent from the radiozone forming section #1-1 can be received. When the mobile terminal E041receives the zone arriving message from the new radio zone, the mobileterminal E041 sends a movement arriving message (J10) to the mobileterminal controller E051. The movement arriving message sent from themobile terminal E041 has the format of a broadcast cell. The movementarriving message is temporarily received by the radio zone formingsection #1-1 and changed into cells again such that the broadcast cellis buried in the pay load portion of the AAL3, and the cells aretransferred to the mobile terminal controller E051 through the m:1unidirectional ATM connection I02 (J10′).

When the mobile terminal controller E051 receives the moving arrivingmessage, the mobile terminal controller E051 knows the radio zone inwhich the mobile terminal E041 is present on the basis of the movementarriving message, if necessary (occurrence of movement between the radioclusters), the connection setting request (J11) is sent to theconnection setting section G0D. A connection required at this time is aconnection for connecting the new adjacent radio cluster to the mobileterminal controller. At the same time, a connection to the old adjacentradio cluster may be released. Upon completion of required connectionsetting, the mobile terminal controller E051 rewrites a table includedin the copy tag adding section H08 and the VPI/VCI rewriting section H06which are included in the mobile terminal controller E051 such that thenewly set connection is connected as described. In this manner, thehandover process is completed.

Upon completion of the handover process, the mobile terminal controllerE051 forms a movement acknowledge message (J12) by a broadcast cell tonotify the mobile terminal E041 of the completion of the handoverprocess and changes the message into cells by the AAL3 to send thecells. The message is temporarily received by the radio zone formingsection #1-1 and assembled in the formation of a broadcast cell, and theassembled message is broadcasted to the radio zone of the radio zoneforming section to be send to the mobile terminal E041.

In preparation for movement between radio zones/clusters in a time fromwhen the movement arriving message (J10) is sent to when the movementacknowledge message (J12′), the movement acknowledge message (J12), asin the case of the movement service resource message (J05) describedabove, may be copied and transferred to the radio zone forming sectionsE03 ij in the radio cluster in which the mobile terminal E041 is presentor a radio cluster adjacent to the radio cluster.

When the use of service by the mobile terminal is completed, the mobileterminal notifies the ATM communication network that the use of serviceis completed. When the ATM communication network receives thisnotification, the mobile terminal controller E051 releases theconnection which has been used by the mobile terminal and the connectionwhich is set in advance for movement between the radio clusters. In thiscase, it is known by one skilled in the art that these connections canbe released by the same protocol as described above.

The description related to a function of realizing a handover processfor realizing the movement service according to the present invention iscompleted.

<Method of Setting MID Allocated to Radio Zone Forming Section>

Note that the values of the MIDs allocated to the radio zone formingsections #1-j (E03 ij) used in communication on a movement controlconnection may be allocated by a maintenance person before the movementcontrol connection is installed, or may be acquired by each mobileterminal controller E051 when the movement control connection is set inthe following manner.

As an equipment constituting an ATM-LAN system described by the presentinventor in the Japanese Patent Application No. 5-349634, is assumedthat a global unique node number is added to the radio zone formingsection #i-j to which the present invention is applied in the samenumber space as that of another equipment constituting the system. It isassumed that the VPI/VCI, allocated to a movement control connection,between a radio zone forming section and a passive star optical coupleris predetermined just like a signaling VCI in the UNI standards of theATM forum.

MID=0 is reserved for an operation such as MID acquisition. When a poweris turned on, each radio zone forming section E03 ij sends an MIDacquisition request message of MID=0 to the connection I01 toward themovement control connection I02. The message of MID=0 is restricted inlength i.e. one cell length in order to be able to receive this messagewithout MID acquisition. In this manner, even if the message of MID=0 issent from the plurality of radio zone forming sections #1-j (E03 ij) tothe connection I02 at once, the messages sent from the respective radiozone forming sections can be correctly received by the mobile terminalcontroller E051. The MID acquisition request message includes at least anode number allocated to the radio message forming section which sendsan allocation request message.

The mobile terminal controller E051 has a table for managing theallocation state of an MID. When the mobile terminal controller E051receives the MID acquisition request message of MID=0 from theconnection I02, the mobile terminal controller E051 finds an empty MIDwith reference to the MID allocation table. The empty MID is allocatedto a radio zone forming section having the node number in the receivedMID acquisition request message. Thereafter, an MID acquisition responsemessage including the allocated MID and the node number of the radiozone forming section which sends the MID acquisition request message isformed, and is sent to the 1:m unidirectional ATM connection I01 as themessage of MID=0. The MID acquisition response message is regarded as amessage constituted by a single cell.

The MID acquisition response message is transferred to the radio zoneforming sections E03 ij by the 1:m unidirectional ATM connection I01.When each of the radio zone forming sections E03 ij receives the MIDacquisition response message, the radio zone forming section E03 ijrefers to the node number included in the message to check whether thenode number is for the radio zone forming section E03 ij. When the nodenumber included in the message is allocated to the radio zone formingsection E03 ij, the message is regarded as a message for the radio zoneforming section E03 ij, and the message is acquired. Communication onthe following movement control connection is performed by using the MIDincluded in the message.

Note that when the MID acquisition request/response message is lost by abit error or the like on the way, the MID allocation table managed bythe mobile terminal controller E051 does not coincide with the MID whichthe radio zone forming section E03 ij actually has. In order to preventthis, the mobile terminal controller E051 sends the MID confirmationrequest message at predetermined time intervals, and a protocol in whichall the mobile terminal controllers E051 responds to the MIDconfirmation request message may be defined on the mobile terminalcontrol connection. In this case, as in the MID acquisitionrequest/response message, a message of MID=0 constituted by a singlecell is preferably used.

The mobile terminal controller E051 sends a MID confirmation requestmessage to the connection I01 at predetermined time intervals when anyfault occurs. The connection I01 causes all the radio zone formingsections E03 ij included in one radio cluster to receives the MIDconfirmation request message. When each of the radio zone formingsections E03 ij receives the MID confirmation request message, the radiozone forming section E03 ij forms an MID confirmation response messageincluding at least a node number and an MID which are allocated to theradio zone forming section E03 ij, and sends the MID confirmationresponse message to the connection I02. The connection I02 transfers theMID confirmation response message sent from all the radio zone formingsections E03 ij to the mobile terminal controller E051. In this manner,since the mobile terminal controller E051 knows MIDs allocated to allthe radio zone forming sections E03 ij in one radio cluster, the mobileterminal controller E051 can check whether mismatching is presentbetween the MID allocation tables managed by the radio zone formingsections E03 ij and actual allocation.

In addition, mismatching between the tables and the actual allocation isdetected as a result of MID confirmation/response message, the radiozone forming sections E03 ij must be requested to update the MIDs. Inorder to execute this, MID update request/response message is preferablydefined on a movement control connection as a message of MID=0constituted by a single cell.

The MID update request message includes the node number of the radiozone forming sections E03 ij in which mismatching is detected and acorrect MID allocated to the radio zone forming section E03 ij. Whenmismatching is detected, the mobile terminal controller E051 forms theMID update request message to send the MID update request message to theconnection I01. With the operation of the connection I01, the MID updaterequest message is transferred to all the radio zone forming sectionsE03 ij included in one radio cluster. When each of the radio zoneforming sections E03 ij receives the MID update request message, theradio zone forming section E03 ij compares its node number with the nodenumber included in the message. If the node numbers coincide with eachother, it is determined that the MID included in the message isallocated, and the MID used for dividing the subsequent message intocells and assembling the message. Upon completion of the change in MID,the radio zone forming section E03 ij forms an MID update responsemessage to send it to the mobile terminal controller E051 through theconnection I20.

<Format of MID Operation Message>

The protocol defined on the connections I01 and I02 when MID=0 as hasbeen described above. A detailed format of an MID operation message usedin the above protocol is shown in FIG. 17. This is a format in whichinformation required for an MID operation is buried in the SAR-PDU of anAAL3/4 in the ITU-T standards. As a matter of course, other formats thanthe format shown in FIG. 17 can be used. For example, a format in whichinformation required for an MID operation is buried in the CPCS-PDU ofthe AAL3/4 in the ITU-T standards. However, a CPCS header constituted byinformation required to correctly assemble a message constituted by aplurality of cells. On the other hand, since a message constituted by asingle cell is considered to perform the MID operation, the CPCS-UDP isnot necessarily used.

Referring to FIG. 13, an ST field (K01), an SN field (K02), an MID field(K03), an LI field (K04), a CRC field (K05), a TYPE field (K06), anallocation MID field (K07), and a node number field (K08) are fieldsused in an SAR layer protocol of the AAL3/4 defined by I. 363 of theITU-T standards. MID=0 is reserved for the MID operation, and each MIDoperation message of MID=0 is a single cell constituted by only onecell. For this reason, the ST field (K01) showing a segment type is 11,and all the MID fields (K03) are 0. The SN field (K02) including asequence number, the LI field (K04) including an information length, andthe CRC field (K05) including Circuic Redundancy code used to check bitaccording to the ITU-T standards.

In the information portion of the SAR-PDU, the following three fieldsare formed. The first field is a TYPE field (K06) showing the type of anMID operation message. In this example, the TYPE field (K06) has a 6-bitlength. Depending on the value of the TYPE field (K06), it is determinedwhether this message is an MID acquisition request, MID acquisitionresponse, an MID confirmation request, an MID confirmation response, anMID update request, or an MID update response.

The second field is an allocated MID field (K07). This field includesthe following information depending on a message type:

-   -   In MID acquisition request: Don't care    -   In MID acquisition response: MID allocated by mobile terminal        controller    -   In MID confirmation request: Don't care    -   In MID confirmation response: MID held by radio zone forming        section    -   In MID update request: MID allocated by mobile terminal        controller    -   In MID update response: MID registered in radio zone forming        section

The third field is a node number field (K08). This field includes thefollowing information depending on a message type:

-   -   In MID acquisition request: node number of radio zone forming        section which requests MID    -   In MID acquisition response: node number of radio zone forming        section subjected to MID allocation    -   In MID confirmation request: node number of radio zone forming        section which requests MID confirmation, or all-terminal        broadcast address disclosed by the present inventor in Japanese        Patent Application No. 5-349634    -   In MID confirmation response: node of radio zone forming section        holding MID written in MID field    -   In MID update request: node number of radio zone forming section        which requests MID update    -   In MID update response: node number of radio zone forming        section in which MID update is performed

A node number described by the present invention in Japanese PatentApplication No. 5-349634 includes a process identifier in a terminal andhas a total of 12 bytes. Since the allocated MID field has 10 bits, 30bytes remains as the information portion of the SAR-PDU. This remainingportion may be designed to transfer other control information includedin the broadcast cell described in Japanese Patent Application No.5-349634.

The description related to the protocol of MID allocation is completed.

<Cipher Function of Mobile Terminal Controller>

At the end of the description of the mobile terminal controller E051,the cipher function of the mobile terminal controller E051 will bedescribed below while referring to FIG. 14 again.

As has been described above, in the mobile service presenting methodaccording to the present invention, information received by a mobileterminal is broadcasted to all the radio zones of a radio cluster inwhich the mobile terminal is present and an adjacent radio cluster. Forthis reason, in order to prevent the content of communication of amobile terminal from leaking to other mobile terminals, i.e., in orderto keep the privacy of communication, a cipher function is necessary. Inthe arrangement of the mobile terminal controller E051 shown in FIG. 14,the pay load cipher section H02, the pay load decoder H03, and thesubscriber cipher key table H04 realize the cipher function.

A cell flow which is exchanged between the physical layer section H01and an ATM switch includes not only cells which are exchanged betweenusers, but also a control message such as a movement service requestmessage. From the point of view of keeping the privacy of communication,ciphering is preferably performed to the pay load portion of each cellexchanged between users to perform broadcasting in a radio zone. Whencontrol messages are ciphered in units of users, since a cipher keyrequired for decoding cannot be known, all the control messages must beciphered by using one cipher key. However, when the ciphering isperformed to all the control messages by using the same cipher key,these control messages can be decoded in all the terminals. Therefore,the meaning of the cipher is lessened.

Cells exchanged between users include a cell transferred to a radiocluster and broadcasted in a radio zone and a cell which is notbroadcasted and guided to a destination terminal with cablecommunication. The cell guided to the destination terminal with cablecommunication may be ciphered as a matter of course. However, when thecell is not expected to be received by a malicious user, such a cellneed not be ciphered.

As described above, between the mobile terminal controller E051 and theATM switch, the connection between the mobile terminal controller E051and a radio cluster, the connection between the mobile terminalcontroller E051 and the communication destination, and a movementcontrol connection are set. These connections are identified by theVPI/VCI between the mobile terminal controller E051 and the ATM switch.More specifically, when the VPI/VCI of each cell is referred to, it canbe determined whether the cell is ciphered or not or whether the cell isto be ciphered or not. A ciphered cell input to the mobile terminalcontroller E051 is temporarily decoded in the pay load decoding sectionH03, and is subjected to a process in the mobile terminal controllerE051. After the cell is subjected to the process in the mobile terminalcontroller E051, when the cell is transferred to the physical layersection H01, a cell to be ciphered is ciphered in the pay load ciphersection. In this manner, it is controlled whether an input cell flow isciphered with a VPI/VCI. In addition, when it is controlled whether aninput cell flow is ciphered with a VPI/VCI, connections can be freelychained from a terminal required to be ciphered to a terminal requirednot to be ciphered, from a terminal required not to be ciphered to aterminal required to be ciphered, or from a terminal required to beciphered to a terminal required to be ciphered.

The subscriber cipher key table H04 holds information indicating whetherthe pay load portion of a cell belonging to a connection treated by themobile terminal controller E051 is ciphered or not or whether the payload portion is to be ciphered or not, and a cipher key required fordecoding or ciphering if the pay load portion is ciphered or to beciphered.

As is well known as a conventional cipher, a cipher algorithm using acommon key which can independently cipher/decode the pay load of eachcell and is used in ciphering or decoding is known. When this cipheralgorithm to the pay load, the length of the ciphered pay load does notchange. Such a cipher algorithm is preferably used in the pay loadcipher section H02 and the pay load decoding section H03.

When a connection required to be ciphered is set by a connection whichpresent a mobile terminal service, the control processor H09 of themobile terminal controller E051 writes a cipher key which is registeredin the control processor H09 in advance for each subscriber whichrequests connection setting in an entry corresponding to the VPI/VCI ofthe set connection.

The control cell branch/insert section H05 gives a cell to the physicallayer section H01 through the pay load cipher section H02. At this timethe pay load cipher section H02 uses the VPI/VCI of the input cell torefer the subscriber cipher key table H04. When the cell belongs aconnection required to be ciphered, a cipher key is registered in thesubscriber cipher key table H04, and the subscriber cipher key table H04outputs the cipher key to the pay load cipher section H02. The pay loadcipher section H02 ciphers the pay load portion of the cell by using theobtained cipher key, and gives the cell to the physical layer sectionH01.

When the pay load decoding section H03 receives the cell from thephysical layer section H01, the pay load decoding section H03 uses theVPI/VCI of the input cell to refer the subscriber cipher key table H04.When the cell belongs a connection required to be ciphered, a cipher keyis registered in the subscriber cipher key table H04, and the subscribercipher key table H04 outputs the cipher key to the pay load decodingsection H03. The pay load decoding section H03 decodes the pay loadportion of the cell by using the obtained cipher key, and gives the cellto the control cell branch/insert section H05.

With the above operation, a selected pay load portion can be ciphered inonly a necessary connection. Since the control cell branch/insertsection H05 treats a relatively large number of connections, arelatively large amount of calculation is required to execute theciphering/decoding. In consideration of this, the arrangement of themobile terminal controller E051 shown in FIG. 14 can realize theciphering/decoding with pipeline hardware.

Each connection and a cipher key can be made relate to each other insuch a manner that, when a movement service request message shown inFIG. 16 is sent, a number allocated to a subscriber is included in themovement service request message. A correspondence table between thenumber of allocated to the subscriber and the cipher key registered whenthe subscriber joins the movement service is held by the mobile terminalcontroller E051, and a cipher key from the correspondence table ispreferably written in a subscriber cipher key table corresponding theVPI/VCI of the connection set as the result of the connection setting.It is assumed that the subscriber using the mobile terminal E041 is onlyone or that charging to the mobile terminal E041 is performed to theonly one subscriber, and a node number is given to the mobile terminalE041 according to a mobile terminal interface method disclosed by thepresent inventor in Japanese Patent Application No. 5-349634. In thiscase, the node number can be regarded as a subscriber number.

As the arrangement of the mobile terminal E041, the arrangement of themobile terminal disclosed by the present inventor in Japanese PatentApplication No. 5-349634 may be used. However, since it is supposed thatthe mobile terminal disclosed in Japanese Patent Application No.5-349634 is used in a private network, the mobile terminal does not havea ciphering/decoding function for the pay load portion of a cell. Inorder to use a mobile terminal in the mobile terminal service describedabove, the mobile terminal E041 must have a function corresponding tothe ciphering/decoding function executed in the mobile terminalcontroller E051. However, since the ciphering/decoding function on themobile terminal side may be executed to only a cell which received bythe mobile terminal, a large throughput is not specially required. Forthis reason, the function need not have a dedicated hardware, and may berealized as software which operates on the processor of the mobileterminal disclosed in Japanese Patent Application No. 5-349634. A cipherkey required for the ciphering/decoding function may be mailed to asubscriber when the subscriber receives the mobile terminal service inthe CATV network, or a subscriber may know the cipher key when thesubscriber is registered by a terminal at the front of an office of aCATV company.

The detailed description related to the mobile terminal controller E051is completed.

<Supplementary Description about Compromise Mobile Terminal Service onCATV Network>

In a method of presenting a mobile terminal service according to thepresent invention, with movement of a mobile terminal, a connectionallocated to the mobile terminal moves in an ATM communication networkwith the same VPI/VCI value. This means that the same VPI/VCI isallocated to one terminal over a plurality of interface points, i.e.,that the VPI/VCI is used as a terminal identifier in an ATM layer. Whenthe mobile terminal is regarded as one process to be migrated, in thefirst application, the processes to be migrated accesses the network byusing the same VPI/VCI to use an MID for identifying the process; in thesecond embodiment, one process to be migrated accesses the network byusing one VPI/VCI.

When the VPI/VCI allocated to the mobile terminal is used for othercommunication in advance at the migration destination, the VPI/VCI ofthe connection which performs the original communication must bechanged, or the VPI/VCI used by the terminal must be changed. In eitherof these cases, a communication protocol is complicated. Therefore, inan ATM communication network to which the present invention is applied,an area for a VPI/VCI is formed to the mobile terminal service inadvance, and an unused VPI/VCI in the VPI/VCI area is preferablyallocated to a terminal which begins to receive the mobile terminalservice. This can be more simply realized by the following method. Thatis, only a VPI is allocated to the mobile terminal service in advance,and a VCI in the VP is sequentially allocated. Such a process isexecuted in the process ID allocating section G0E shown in FIG. 12.

In the compromise mobile terminal service according to the presentinvention, when each mobile terminal moves between radio zones, amovement arriving message is sent to the mobile terminal incorrespondence with a zone arriving message sent from a radio zoneforming section. For this reason, a radio zone where each mobileterminal is located can be known on real time. By using this, thefollowing can be realized. That is, a radio zone is installed at adangerous place such as a pond located in an area in which a CATVnetwork performs the service, and the mobile terminal controller holds acorrespondence table between the number of the radio zone andinformation indicating whether said radio zone is a dangerous place.When a mobile terminal enters a radio zone specified as a dangerousplace by the correspondence table, a predetermined mobile terminal or afixed terminal can be notified that the mobile terminal enters thedangerous place. Therefore, the following very convenient service for asubscriber can be realized. That is, as described above, a parent giveshis/her child a mobile terminal, and an alarm is generated by a mobileterminal which the parent has or a terminal in a living room when thechild gets close to the dangerous place.

As has been described above, the mobile terminal controller E051 is akind of fixed terminal for realizing a special service with the help ofthe connection setting section G0D. For this reason, an ATM connectionmust be set between the mobile terminal controller E051 and a connectionsetting section G05D, as a matter of course. This ATM connection may bea signaling VC defined by Q. 2931 or the like or may be a broadcastchannel described by the present inventor in Japanese Patent ApplicationNo. 5-349634.

The description related to the compromise mobile terminal service on aCATV network, which is the second application to which the presentinvention is applied is completed.

(Embodiment 3)

A resource management method on an ATM-LAN capable of efficientlyexecuting distributed multimedia applications will be described below.As will be described later, this method can be more efficiently used bycombining the method to the above process migration method.

<Scheduling Method for User Process>

The scheduling method for user processes will be described below. Inorder to cancel the CAC dead-lock described above to advance executionof the user processes, a resource temporarily allocated to a userprocess #i is intercepted by another user process once before executionof the user process #i is completed. After the operation of the userprocess which intercepts the resource is completed, or the interceptedresource is released, a resource must be allocated to the user processwhose resource is intercepted. For example, in the above mentioned casewherein the CAC dead-lock occurs, a file #1 assured by a process A isintercepted, the file #1 is allocated to a process B, or a communicationbandwidth on a physical link P036 obtained by the process B isintercepted to be allocated to the process A. In this case, one processadvances, and the other process can be executed by using the resourcereleased upon completion of execution of one process. In this manner,the CAC dead-lock can be canceled.

More specifically, in order to cancel the CAC dead-lock, an OSintegrally manages not only ordinary resources such as a file, a memory,and a processor which are managed to be allocated to user processes, butalso a communication bandwidth serving as a resource unique to the ATMcommunication network, and the resources are orderly allocated to therespective user processes. At the same time, a process in which, whendead-lock occurs, resources are intercepted from a user process to beallocated to another user process must be realized.

When interception of resources is to be realized, a process ispreferably performed such a manner that an overhead for intercepting theresources. In order to decrease the overhead in size, an interceptionprocess must be structured in consideration of the nature of resources.The nature of the resources has the following two types.

The first type is a resource having a side effect represented by a file.The side effect means that a result obtained when a process obtains theresource and then processes the resource influences execution of anotherprocess. For example, assume that a plurality of processes write somedata in a same file. It is assumed that a process A writes data “A” in afile A having an initial value “0” that a process B writes data “B”. Inthis case, when the process A is executed first, and the process B isexecuted, information read when the process B accesses the file A is“A”. However, when the process B is executed first, information readfrom the file A becomes “0”. More specifically, execution of the processA influences execution of the process B.

The access order for resources having side effects considerablyinfluences execution of the processes.

The other type of a resource is a resource which is represented by,e.g., a processor, and has no side effect. When allocation of aprocessor is changed from a process to another process, the value of aregister in the processor is temporarily saved at a place, generally, inan area called a stack on a memory, the value of the register of a newprocess to be executed is loaded in the processor, and the new processbegins to be executed. In this manner, unless the processor is allocatedto processes, execution of a process does not influence execution ofanother process. That is, there is no side effect.

When a resource having a side effect is to be intercepted, an operationwhich is performed to the resource by a process is temporarily reset,and the operation must be performed to another resource. For example,dead-lock occurring when the process A and the process B scramble for afile #1 (P041) and a physical link P036 is to be canceled, in order tointercept the file #1 assured by the process A, a process such as datawrite or data delete performed to the file #1 before the process A isslept must be reset, otherwise, the process B accesses the file #1 in avague state, i.e., in the middle of processing for the process A. Toreset the contents of a file is an important process of the overhead.Therefore, as a resource to be intercepted, a resource having no sideeffect is preferentially intercepted.

In addition to the processor described above, a communication bandwidthserving as a source unique to an ATM communication network can beregarded as a resource having no side effect. More specifically, thecommunication bandwidth is a resource which is suitable forinterception. When the communication bandwidth is intercepted to preventa process for a user process from being executed, the user processbecomes a sleep state in this state. Even if a communication bandwidthis allocated to the user process again to restart the process for theuser process, the process advances from the state in which the userprocess is slept, and only a message is sent. For this reason, theprocess can be advanced without considering that the user process isslept. A message which is input in the ATM communication networkimmediately before the user process is slept and which arrives at theuser process after the user process is slept may be received by the userprocess. In this case, as in a case wherein a message is discarded dueto a bit error or the like, when a resending process is executed, acorrect process can be performed.

After some request is sent on a protocol process, when the response ofthe request is not returned within a predetermined time, it isdetermined that abnormality occurs (for example, a request message isdiscarded), and a timeout process is often started. When a timer usedfor the timeout process is stopped while the user process is slept, thetimeout process can be preferably prevented from being stopped while theuser process is slept.

While a user process to which a communication bandwidth is allocated isslept, the user process cannot send a message. More specifically, sincethe user process which is slept does not use a communication bandwidth,the communication bandwidth allocated to the user process is interceptedby another user process, and the user process performs communication byusing the communication bandwidth. In this case, the communicationbandwidth on a physical link can be effectively used, and a total ofexecution time of user processes can be advantageously shortened.

A method of integrally managing a communication bandwidth which is aresource having no side effect and a file which is a resource having aside effect will be described below.

When the scheduling method for user processes which are distributedmultimedia of the present invention is used, in order to schedule arequest from each user process to the communication bandwidth of eachphysical link P03 i, as shown in FIG. 19, communication bandwidthmanagement processes Q011 to Q019 for temporarily holding requests fromthe user processes to communication bandwidths in units of physicallinks are arranged. The communication bandwidth management process Q011manages a communication bandwidth on a physical link P031, thecommunication bandwidth management process Q012 manages a communicationbandwidth on a physical link P032, and, similarly, the communicationbandwidth management processes Q013 to Q019 respectively managecommunication bandwidths on physical links P033 to P039. Eachcommunication bandwidth management process Q01 i includes a processqueue Q03 i for queuing a communication bandwidth-request from each userprocess. In addition, since the communication bandwidths are allowed tobe intercepted, each communication bandwidth management process Q01 iincludes an intercepted process register Q04 i for, when a communicationbandwidth allocated to a user process is intercepted by another process,holding the intercepted.

In order to schedule requests from the user processes to the files P04i, file management processes Q021 to Q025 for temporarily holding therequests from the user processes in units of files are also arranged.The file management process Q021 manages a file #1 (P041), the filemanagement process Q022 manages a file #2 (P042), and, similarly, thefile management processes Q023 to Q025 respectively manage files #3(P043) to #5 (P045). Each file management process Q02 i includes aprocess queue Q05 i for queuing a file use request from each userprocess. In the scheduling method described here, assume that a filehaving a side effect is not allowed to be intercepted. For this reason,an overhead related to interruption decreases in size, but dead-lock mayoccur with respect to a file. With respect to this, when a well-knownprotocol for parallel control to a shared file system such as“Optimistic concurrency control” disclosed in “Distributed systemsconcepts and design”, George F. Coulouris & Jean Dollimore(supervisorily translated by Mizuno Tadanori, Denki Shoin) is applied, aoccurrence probability of dead-lock can be decreased. It does notinfluence the validity of the present invention whether such a protocolis applied to a file.

For descriptive convenience, the following description is performed withassuming that a parallel control protocol is not applied to a file. As amatter of course, when interception of a communication bandwidthdescribed here and a parallel control protocol related to a file areperformed at once, an occurrence probability of dead-lock decreases.However, in this case, an overhead for performing interceptiondisadvantageously increases in size.

The communication bandwidth management processes Q01 i and the filemanagement processes Q02 i are designed to communicate a processscheduler R21 as shown in FIG. 20. The process scheduler R21 controlsthe operation of the user process #i (R1 i) in consideration of aresource request from each user process. Each user process #i outputs ause request for resources other than a process resource to the processscheduler R21. The process scheduler R21 communicates process groups Q01i and Q02 i for managing resources to determine whether resources areallocated to the requests. When the resources are allocated to therequests, execution of the user process #i is continued; when theresources are not allocated to the requests, the user process is sleptuntil the resources are allocated to the requests.

Each user process #i may be constituted by a plurality of sub-processesR131 and R132 for performing communication through an ATM connectionwhose communication bandwidth is assured. In this case, it is assumedthat all the plurality of sub-processes are not simultaneouslyslept/restarted. It is considered that resources requested by theplurality of sub-processes are requested from the same process, theresources may be processed by the process scheduler R21.

The principle of a detection method and avoiding method of CAC dead-lockusing process queues executed by the process scheduler R21 will bedescribed with reference to FIG. 21. FIG. 21 shows an example whereinthe CAC dead-lock occurs, i.e., only a portion where conflict occurs inthe operations of two processes A and B which are arbitrated withrespect to a file #1 (P041) and a physical link P036.

In the example described here, concerned process queues are a processqueue Q036 for managing the bandwidth of the physical link P036 and aprocess queue Q051 for managing the file #1. These process queues holdthe identifier of a process which generates a request to a correspondingresource. A corresponding resource is allocated to a processcorresponding to an identifier held at the start of each of theseprocess queues, and a process corresponding to a subsequent identifierwaits for allocation of the resource.

Referring to FIG. 21, in a box (S01) surrounded by a broken line calledstate 1, the communication bandwidth of the physical link P039 isallocated to the process A, and the file #1 is allocated to the processB. FIG. 21 shows a condition wherein the process B waits for allocationof the file #1. The process B is slept until the file #1 is allocated tothe process B.

In this condition, when the process scheduler R21 allocates thecommunication bandwidth of the physical link P039 to the process A, theprocess scheduler R21 tries to enqueue the process queue Q036. State 1is shifted to the condition in a broken-line box (S02) called state 2.

When the identifier of the process A is to be enqueued to the processqueue Q036, the identifier of the process B is enqueued to the processqueue Q036 in advance (i.e., the bandwidth of the physical link P039 isallocated to the process B in advance). As a result, the process A waitsfor the bandwidth of the physical link P039. When the process schedulerR21 enqueues the identifier of a process to a process queue, a resourcecorresponding to the process queue is not immediately allocated to theprocess corresponding to the identifier to be enqueued, thereby settingan waiting state. In this case, in order to avoid dead-lock, the processscheduler R21 performs the follows.

A resource (in this example, file #1) which has been to a process (inthis example, process A) corresponding to an identifier to be newlyenqueued is listed up (step 1). A process (in this example, process Bwaits for file #1) waiting for the resource which has been allocated islisted up (step 2). It is checked whether the process listed up in step2 assures a resource to be set in a waiting state at present (step 3).If the process listed up in step 2 has assured the resource to be set ina waiting state at present (in this example, process B has assured thecommunication bandwidth of physical link P039), when the process waitsfor the resource, dead-lock occurs. For this reason, this resourceallocation is not desired. As a result, the process scheduler R21 up tothis detects dead-lock.

When the dead-lock is detected, the process scheduler R21 intercepts aresource (in this example, communication bandwidth of physical linkP039) having no side effect from the process which has assured theresource to avoid the dead-lock (step 4), and the process scheduler R21allocates the intercepted resource to a process which generates a newrequest (step 5). In this example, the communication bandwidth of thephysical link P039 is intercepted from the process B and allocated tothe process A. Since this condition is expressed by a process queuegroup shown in FIG. 21, the process scheduler R21 dequeues theidentifier of the process B from the process queue Q036 corresponding tothe communication bandwidth of the physical link P039, and theidentifier of the process B is held by an intercepted process registerQ046. Thereafter, the identifier of the process A is enqueued to theprocess queue Q036. As a result, all the resources required forexecution of the process A are allocated, and execution of the process Ais continued by the process scheduler R21. More specifically, CACdead-lock is canceled.

A method of process execution control executed by the process schedulerR21 will be described below with reference to a more complex example.

An example for explaining the process execution control will bedescribed below with reference to FIG. 22. The example described here isa case wherein three user processes #1 (T01), #2 (T02), and #3 (T03) aresimultaneously executed.

The user process #1 (T01) is constituted by a sub-process T011 executedon a terminal #1 P021 and a sub-process T012 executed on a terminal P025which communicate with each other by using a connection T013 through anATM-LAN. The sub-process T011 refers to the file #1 (P041), and thesub-process T012 refers to a file #5 (P045).

The user process #2 is constituted by a sub-process T021 executed on theterminal #1 P021 and a sub-process T022 executed on a terminal P024which communicate with each other by using a connection T023 through theATM-LAN. The sub-process T021 refers to the file #1 (P041), and thesub-process T022 refers to a file #4 (P044).

The user process #3 is constituted by a sub-process T031 executed on theterminal #1 P022 and a sub-process T032 executed on a terminal P023which communicate with each other by using a connection T033 through theATM-LAN. The sub-process T031 refers to a file #2 (P042), and thesub-process T032 refers to a file #3 (P043).

Each user process assures the communication bandwidths of physical linksin the ATM-LAN in the order shown in FIG. 23 to set a connectionrequired by the corresponding user process, thereby obtaining a filerequired by the user process.

In order to set connection T013, the user process #1 (T01) sequentiallyrequests the bandwidths of physical links in which the connection T013is set, and requests two files. More specifically, in order to set theconnection T013, the user process #1 (T01) sends a request to acommunication bandwidth management process Q016 which manages thebandwidth of the physical link P036, sends a request to a communicationbandwidth management process Q013 corresponding to the physical linkP033, sends a request to a communication bandwidth management processQ011 corresponding to the physical link P031, sends a request to acommunication bandwidth management process Q013 corresponding to thephysical link P032, and sends a request to a communication bandwidthmanagement process Q015 corresponding to the physical link P035.Thereafter, the user process #1 (T01) sends a request to the filemanagement process Q021 to use the file #1, and sends a request to afile management process Q025 to use file #5.

The user process #2 (T02) requests two files first, and, in order to setthe connection T023, sequentially requests the bandwidths of thephysical links in which the connection T023 is set. More specifically,the user process #2 (T02) sends a request to the file management processQ021 to use the file #1, and sends a request to the file managementprocess Q024 to use the file #4. Thereafter, in order to set theconnection T023, the user process #2 (T02) sends a request to acommunication bandwidth management process Q019 which manages thebandwidth of the physical link P039, sends a request to a communicationbandwidth management process Q014 corresponding to the physical linkP034, sends a request to a communication bandwidth management processQ013 corresponding to the physical link P033, and sends a request to acommunication bandwidth management process Q017 corresponding to thephysical link P037.

The user process #3 (T03) requests the file #2 file, and, in order toset the connection T033, sequentially requests the bandwidths of thephysical links in which the connection T033 is set. Thereafter, the userprocess #3 (T03) requests the file #3. More specifically, the userprocess #3 (T03) sends a request to the file management process Q022 touse the file #2. In order to set connection T033, the user process #3(T03) sends a request to the communication bandwidth management processQ017 which manages the bandwidth of a physical link P037, sends arequest to the communication bandwidth management process Q013corresponding to the physical link P033, sends a request to thecommunication bandwidth management process Q014 corresponding to thephysical link P034, and sends a request to a communication bandwidthmanagement process Q018 corresponding to a physical link P038. Finally,the user process #3 (T03) sends a request to the file management processQ023.

Since these user processes are executed in parallel, an actual order inwhich resource requests issued by the user processes are processed bythe process scheduler R21 changes depending on loads or the like actingon the terminals. However, in this case, for descriptive convenience, itis assumed that these requests are processed by the process schedulerR21 in the order indicated by circled numbers added to the sides of therequests to the processes which manage the resources in FIG. 18.

Resource management and process execution control where are executed bythe process scheduler R21 with reference to the resource managementprocesses are sequentially described below with reference to FIGS. 24 to28. Note that FIGS. 24 to 28 show the states of the process queues andintercepted process registers of the resource management processes, andshow the states of resource lists U01, U02, and U03 which are preparedby the process scheduler R21 in units of user processes and which theuser process have.

Resource request (1) to (8) are requests to resources which are notassured by other processes, and are allocated to the processes whichsend requests. FIG. 24 expresses a state wherein the identifier of anallocated user process appears at the start of a process queuecorresponding to each resource.

The moment the bandwidth of each physical link is allocated, a VPI/VCIfor identifying a connection to be set is allocated by each physicallink. The VPI/VCI allocation can be independently performed in eachphysical link, and can be easily realized. For example, eachcommunication bandwidth management process holds the range of a VPI/VCIwhich can be set on a physical link managed by the process, and the listof an allocated VPI/VCI. A VPI/VCI which can be set and is not allocatedmay be searched from the range in which the value of the VPI/VCI can beset and the list of the allocated VPI/VCI. A result obtained by theVPI/VCI allocation may be notified to a required hub by a routing tagsetting protocol to each hub disclosed by the present inventor inJapanese Patent Application No. 6-31180. The hub to which the VPI/VCI isnotified is set in advance in a routing tag table requiring the notifiedVPI/VCI. At the same time, the port number of a physical link whichassure a bandwidth is also specified. In this manner, a routing tag usedfor cell routing in the hub can be calculated by the hub itself. As aresult, the calculated routing tag is written in the routing tag tabletogether with the notified VPI/VCI.

A resource request (9) is a resource request to the physical link P033assured by the user process #1 in response to resource request (4). Atthis time, waiting of resource does not generated by any resources,dead-lock related to resource allocation does not occur. For thisreason, the user process #3 can be slept without any problem. The momentthe user process #3 is slept, waiting of the user process #3 isregistered in a process queue Q033 related to the communicationbandwidth of the physical link P033 (FIG. 24), and the process number ofa communication bandwidth management process which manages allocation ofthe physical link P033 is enqueued to the list U03 of resources forwhich the user process #3 waits. The process scheduler R21 uses thisprocess number of the communication bandwidth management process as theidentifier of each resource.

Before the identifier of the user process #3 is enqueued to the processqueue Q033 corresponding to the physical link P033, as in the above casewherein a communication and is immediately allocated, even in waiting isto be set, the VPI/VCI used by the user process #3 on the physical linkP033 is predetermined. The obtained result may be notified to a requiredhub by the routing tag setting protocol disclosed by the presentinventor in Japanese Patent Application No. 6-31180. The notified hubsets the VPI/VCI used by the user process #3 in advance in the routingtag table. At the same time, the hub calculates a routing tag and setsit in advance as in the case the bandwidth is immediately allocated.

With respect to resource requests (10) to (12), there is no processwhich assures a corresponding resource in advance. For this reason, therequested resources requested by the user process #1 (T01) and the userprocess #2 (T02) are allocated.

In a resource request (13), the user process 32 sends a request to thephysical link P033. The physical link P033 allocated to the user process#1 in advance, and the user process #3 is set in a waiting state. Asdescribed above, it is checked whether deadlock occurs even if the userprocess #2 having the physical link P033 is slept. In this case, sincewaiting does not have occurred in resources except for the resource ofthe physical link P033, waiting of the user process 32 is registered inthe process queue Q033 related to the communication bandwidth of thephysical link P033, the user process #2 becomes a sleep state (FIG. 24).At this time, the process number of a communication bandwidth managementprocess which manages allocation of the physical link P033 is enqueuedto the list U02 of resources for which the user process #2 waits.

Up to this, only the user process #1 does not become a sleep state. Theuser process #1 outputs a request of circulated number 14 and a requestfor the file #1 (P041) to the process scheduler R21.

The file #1 (P041) is allocated to the user process #2 according to therequest of circulated number 2. Before waiting of the user process #1 isregistered in the process queue Q051 related to the file #1 (P041), theprocess scheduler R21 checks whether this waiting causes dead-lock (FIG.24).

The process scheduler R21 obtains a list of user processes which waitresources which has been assured by the user process #1. In this stage,the resources allocated to the user process #1 are as follows. Morespecifically, the resources are the bandwidth of the physical link P031(by resource request '7), the bandwidth of the physical link P032 (byresource request (10)), the bandwidth of the physical link P033 (byresource request (4)), and the bandwidth of a physical link P035(resource request). Processes which wait for these resources can beknown on the basis of the identifiers of the processes held in theprocess queue Q033 which manages the bandwidth of the physical linkP033, and are the user process #3 and the user process #2.

Since the list of user processes which wait for the resources which havebeen assured by the user process #1, the process scheduler R21 checkswhether a resource to be assured by the user process #1, i.e., a userprocess which has assured the file 32, is present in the list of userprocesses, so as to detect deadlock. In the state shown in FIG. 24, aprocess which assures the file #2 is the user process #2, and the userprocess #2 is present in the process list described above. For thisreason, when the user process #1 waits for the file #2, dead-lockoccurs.

Since the dead-lock is detected, the process scheduler R21 interceptsthe allocated resource to avoid the dead-lock (FIG. 37). On the basis ofthe process list formed above and the state of the process queue Q051,it is understood that the user process #1 and the user process #2 areset in a dead-lock state when the user process #1 is set in a waitingstate. At this time, the resource which cannot be acquired by the userprocess #1 is a file which is a resource having a side effect, and theuser process #2 waits for a communication bandwidth which is a resourcehaving no side effect. Therefore, the overhead of interception of theresource can be decreased by restarting the user process #2 in place ofsleeping the user process #1.

When the user process #2 is to be restarted, the communication bandwidthof the physical link P033 is intercepted from the user process #1. Inorder to express this, the identifier of the user process #1 isregistered in an intercepted process register. Q043 of the physical linkP033, and the identifier of the user process #1 is registered in theprocess queue Q051 which manages allocation of the file #1 (P041),thereby sleeping the user process #1. At this time, from the list U02 ofthe resources for which the user process #2 waits, the process number ofthe communication bandwidth management process which manages allocationof the physical link P033 is dequeued. At the same time, the processnumber of the communication bandwidth management process which managesallocation of the physical link P033 and the process number of the filemanagement process which manages allocation of the file #1 (P041) areenqueued to the list U01 of the resources for which the user process #1waits (FIC. 37).

With respect to the user process #1, the following must be noted. Thatis, the bandwidth on the physical link P033 is intercepted, but theVPI/VCI and routing tag need not be intercepted. More specifically, aVPI/VCI used by the user process #1 on the physical link P033 and aVPI/VCI used by the user process #2 on the physical link P033 areselected to be different from each other, and each VPI/VCI isindependently set in the entry of the routing tag table of a requiredhub. Although the bandwidth assured by the user process #1 isintercepted by the user process #2, setting of the VPI/VCI used by theuser process #1 on the routing tag table need not be released. When abandwidth is allocated to the user process #1 again to restart the userprocess #1, setting of the routing tag table remains. For this reason,it should be noted that communication can be rapidly restarted.

The restarted user process #2 sends a resource request (15) for thephysical link P037 to the process scheduler R21. The physical link P037has been allocated to the user process #3 by the resource request (6).At this time, however, since the user process 33 becomes a sleep state,the bandwidth of the physical link P037 is intercepted to be allocatedto the user process #2 (FIG. 26). As a result, all the resourcesrequired to execute the user process #2 are allocated to the userprocess #2, and the execution of the user process #2 is continued untilthese resources are released. When the identifiers of processes areenqueued to the process queues in the bandwidths, VPIs/VCIs or routingtags on the physical links are sequentially set. For this reason, atthis time, routing tag table setting of a hub on the route of theconnection T023, which required to set a VP/VC link constituting theconnection T023 used by the user process #2 has been completed.Therefore, it should be noted that communication between thesub-processes of the user process #2 can be performed.

When the execution of the user process #2 advances, the resourcesassured by the user process #2 are released. In order to express this,the identifier of the user process #2 is dequeued from process queueswhich manage the resources. More specifically, the identifier of theuser process #2 is dequeued from the process queue Q033 which managesallocation of a user process to the physical link P033, a process queueQ034 corresponding to the physical link P034, a process queue Q037corresponding to the physical link P037, a process queue Q039corresponding to the physical link P039, a process queue Q051corresponding to the file #1 (P041), and a process queue Q054corresponding to the file #4 (P044). As a result, the identifier of theuser process #1 appears at the start of the process queue related to thefile #1 (P041), and the file #1 (P041) is allocated to the user process#1 (FIG. 27).

In addition, with reference to the physical link P033, since theidentifier of the user process #1 is written in the intercepted processregister Q043, the identifier is inserted in the start of the processqueue Q033, and the bandwidth of the physical link P033 is allocated tothe user process #1 again. The identifiers of these resources aredequeued from the list U01 of the resources for which the user process#1 waits, and the list becomes empty. For this reason, execution of theuser process #1 is restarted.

Setting on the routing tag table related to the VPI/VCI and routing tagwhich are used on a physical link released together with that on the hubin which the connection T023 is set, by a user process is preferablyreleased by a protocol for releasing routing tag table setting, asdisclosed by the present inventor in Japanese Patent Application No.6-31180.

The user process #1 acquires the file #5 (P045) in response to a requestof circled number 16. In this manner, all the resources required toexecute the user process #1 are allocated, and execution of the userprocess #1 is continued until these resources are released.

With respect to the bandwidth of the physical link P037, the identifierof the user process #3 held by a intercepted process register Q047 ofthe physical link is inserted in the start of the process queue Q037,and the bandwidth of the physical link is allocated to the user process#3 again. The identifier of the allocated physical link is deleted fromthe list U03 of the resources for which the user process #3 waits.However, at this time, the list is not empty. The user process #3 iskept in a sleep state.

When the execution of the user process #1 advances, the resourcesassured by the user process #1 are released. In order to express this,the identifier of the user process #1 is dequeued from process queueswhich manage the resources. More specifically, the identifier of theuser process #1 is dequeued from the process queue Q031 which managesallocation of a user process to the physical link P031, a process queueQ032 corresponding to the physical link P032, a process queue Q033corresponding to the physical link P033, the process queue Q035corresponding to the physical link P035, a process queue Q036corresponding to the physical link P036, the process queue Q051corresponding to the file #1 (P041), and a process queue Q055corresponding to the file #5 (P045). As a result, the identifier of theuser process #3 appears at the start of the process queue Q033 relatedto the physical link P033, and the bandwidth of the physical link isallocated to the user process #3. The identifier of this resource isdequeued from the list U03 of resources for which the user process #3waits, and the list becomes empty. For this reason, execution of theuser process #3 is restarted (FIG. 28).

The user process #3 sequentially sends a request of circled number 17,i.e., a request to the bandwidth of the physical link P034, a request ofcircled number 18, i.e., a request to the bandwidth of the physical linkP038, and a request of circled number 19, i.e., an access request to thefile #3 (P043). There is no process which requires resources. Therefore,all the request are satisfied, all the resources required to execute theuser process #3 are allocated to the user process #3, and execution ofthe user process #3 is continued.

As described above, when a process sends a request for a resource, andthe resource is assured by another process, the process which sends therequest becomes a sleep state. Therefore, an order of access to theresource is controlled.

The description about resource management and process execution controlexecuted by the process scheduler R21 is completed.

In this case, processes for managing resources, communication bandwidthmanagement processes Q01 i, and file management processes Q02 i aredescribed as processes which are independent of the process schedulerR21. However, it is apparent that the process scheduler R21 mayincorporate the process queues having these processes and interceptedprocess registers. If these processes are used as independent processes,the present invention can disadvantageously cope with a change inarrangement of the network, e.g., additionally arrangement of a physicallink. However, since inter-process communication increases, an increasein overhead disadvantageously occurs. The process arrangement should bedetermined depending on a time required for dead-lockdetection/avoidance required by the process scheduler R21.

In the example described above, an intercepted process register isarranged for a resource to be intercepted. When interception occurs, theidentifier of the process whose resource is intercepted is stored in theregister. This can be also realized by the following manner. That is,the identifier of the process which intercepts the resource is insertedinto the area next to the process identifier at the start of the processqueue.

In addition, in the example described above, it is assumed that thebandwidth of one physical link is allocated to one process. However, thebandwidth of one physical link may be divided to be allocated to aplurality of processes.

Bandwidths obtained by dividing the bandwidth of one physical link canbe allocated to a plurality of processes by, e.g., the following manner.The communication bandwidth management process Q01 i may be constitutedto include, as shown in FIG. 29, a process queue V01 which can holdwords each obtained by combining a process identifier, a requestbandwidth, and a allocated flag, and a remaining bandwidth register V02which remains in the physical link managed by the communicationbandwidth management process Q01 i and which is not allocated to a userprocess. The process queue V01 shown in FIG. 29 is designed to manage aphysical link having a bandwidth of 150 Mbps. FIG. 29 shows state 1wherein a request of a 30-Mbps bandwidth from the process #1, a requestof a 50-Mbps bandwidth from the process #2, a request of a 20-Mbpsbandwidth from the process #3, and a request of a 80-Mbps bandwidth fromthe process #4 are managed by the process queue V01.

State 1 is a condition obtained after the processes #1, #2, #3, and #4request a physical link in this order. Bandwidths according to therequests are allocated to the processes #1, #2, and #3, respectively.This is indicated such that an allocated flag corresponding to theprocess identifiers is “1”. The sum of the bandwidths requested by theprocesses #1, #2, and #3 is 100 Mbps, the bandwidth remaining on thephysical link corresponding to the process queue is 50 Mbps. Theremaining bandwidth of 50 Mbps is recorded on the remaining bandwidthregister V02. The process #4 requests a bandwidth of 80 Mbps, and thisbandwidth exceeds the bandwidth remaining on the physical link atpresent. For this reason, bandwidth allocation is not performed. This isindicated such that an allocated flag corresponding to the process #4 is“0”.

State 2 shows a condition wherein, in state 1, the process #1 releasethe bandwidth, and the bandwidth is allocated to the process #4.

In condition 1, when the process #1 releases 30-Mbps assured in thephysical link, the request related to the process #1 is dequeued fromthe process queue V01, and, at the same time, the released 30-Mbpsbandwidth is added to the remaining bandwidth register V02. As a result,the 80-Mbps bandwidth which remains on the physical link in such amanner that the process #1 releases the bandwidth is recorded on theremaining bandwidth register V02. When the process #1 releases thebandwidth, the bandwidth requested by the process #4 can be obtained onthe physical link, and the bandwidth can be allocated to the process #4.

When the 80-Mbps bandwidth is allocated to the process #4, an allocatedflag corresponding to the identifier of the process #4 is set to be “1”,and, at the same time, the allocated 80-Mbps bandwidth is drawn from theremaining bandwidth register V02. As a result, “0 Mbps” is recorded inthe remaining bandwidth register V02.

In state 2, in order to avoid dead-lock, the 80-Mbps bandwidth allocatedto the process #4 may be intercepted to be allocated to another process.In this case, as in the above case wherein all the bandwidths-ofphysical links are allocated to one process, the process #4 becomes asleep state. For this reason, the 80 Mbps is not used by the process #4,and no congestion does not occurs in a hub as a matter of course. Wheninterception occurs, as in the above case all the bandwidths of physicallinks are allocated to one process, setting of the VPI/VCI and routingtag allocated to the process #4 need not be released.

The above scheduling method for user processes can be executed by, e.g.,the call setting process of the ATM-LAN or, in particular, a connectionsetting process disclosed by the present inventor in Japanese PatentApplication No. 6-31180. However, when scheduling of user processes isexecuted by one process in the ATM communication system as describedabove, the throughput of a multimedia application on the ATMcommunication system is disadvantageously limited to the throughput ofthe process. This scheduling method is preferably executed to bedistributed to terminals. This can be realized at low cost by applyingthe above process migration, as described below.

FIG. 30 shows the process arrangement of terminals for realizing theabove scheduling method for user processes according to the presentinvention. In each terminal, a process scheduler W02 i, a communicationbandwidth management process W03 i, a resource allocation communicationprocess W04 i, and a self resource management process W05 i.

The process scheduler W02 i of each terminal receives a resource requestissued from the user process #i on each terminal, communicates with theprocess which managing the resource to perform allocation, and performsexecution control of the user process. The self resource managementprocess W05 i manages a file system and other resources which eachterminal has, i.e., which can be accessed without the ATM-LAN. For thispurpose, the self resource management process W05 i has a process queueequivalent to a process queue for file management shown in FIG. 19 inunits of resources managed by the self resource management process W05i.

The communication bandwidth management process W03 i, in order to managethe bandwidth of a predetermined physical link of the physical links inthe ATM-LAN, has process queues for managing the communicationbandwidths shown in FIG. 19 or FIG. 29 in units of physical linksmanaged by the communication bandwidth management process W03 i. Theresource allocation communication process W04 i uses an n:nbidirectional ATM connection W06 to send a request of a resource whichis requested by a user process W01 i executed on each terminal and isnot managed by the terminal to another terminal, or to receive a requestfrom another terminal to a resource managed by the correspondingterminal. This process performs an adaptation process such as celldividing by an MID allocated on the n:n bidirectional ATM connectionW06.

The communication bandwidth management process W03 i on each terminalmanages the bandwidth of an allocated physical link in the ATM-LAN. Forthis reason, a physical link must be allocated to the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i in an active state. An allocatingmethod of a physical link in an active state and a notifying method toeach terminal will be described below.

When a terminal connected to the ATM-LAN is powered on, each terminalstarts the process scheduler W02 i to schedule a process group whichindependently executed by the corresponding terminal, and activates amulti-process environment. The process scheduler W02 i performsexecution control of the user process W01 i or the like in the terminal,and, at the same time, presents function for performing inter-processcommunication. When inter-process communication is performed on aterminal, a message is necessarily exchanged between-processes throughthe process scheduler W02 i.

When the multi-process environment is activated, the terminal activatesthe self resource management process W05 i for managing resources suchas a file system held by the terminal. The self resource managementprocess W05 i includes a process queue for allocating resources whicheach terminal has. As performed in a work station available from themarket, each terminal is arranged in such a manner that a list ofresources which the terminal has can be formed immediately after theterminal is powered on. For this reason, the terminal can form arequired process queue group by using the list of resources which theterminal has. Thereafter, each terminal activates the resourceallocation communication process W04 i to communicate with anotherterminal and to switch resources. The resource allocation communicationprocess W04 i communicates with another terminal by using the atmosphereand the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06. It is assumed thatVPIs/VCIs for identifying the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06 by aphysical link between a terminal and a hub, i.e., a VPI/VCI used whenthe process sends a cell and the VPI/VCI of a cell received by theprocess, are predetermined to control distributed application execution.

When the process scheduler W02 i, the resource allocation communicationprocess W04 i, and the self resource management process W05 i areactivated in each terminal, a manager of the ATM-LAN selects oneterminal, and instructs the terminal to be an activation seed. Theterminal which is instructed to be an activation seed recognizes thenetwork configuration by using a method or the like disclosed by thepresent inventor in Japanese Patent Application No. 6-31180 to recognizehubs, terminals, and physical links included in the ATM-LAN.

The terminal serving as the activation seed, by using the result of therecognition of the network configuration, identifies each terminalconstituting a “field” in which distributed applications are executed,and sets up the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06. For this reason,the terminal rewrites the routing tag table of a required hub by usingthe method or the like disclosed by the present inventor in JapanesePatent Application No. 6-31180 to set the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection W06. A VPI/VCI for identifying the connection is the aboveVPI/VCI which is used when each terminal sends information to the n:nbidirectional ATM connection W06 or receives information from the n:nbi-directional ATM connection W06.

When the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06 is set, the resourceallocation communication processes W04 i of the terminals cancommunicate with each other. In this state, each resource allocationcommunication process W04 i executes an MID acquisition procedure (to bedescribed later) to acquire an MID used when each terminal performscommunication by a variable length message using the n:n bidirectionalATM connection W06.

The MID acquisition protocol uses that one ATM cell is transferred onthe n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06 without being divided. In orderto execute the MID acquisition protocol, MID=0 is reserved. Eachresource allocation communication process W041 sends a message of MID=0constituted by a single cell as shown in FIG. 17.

However, in the protocol described herein, the MID is allocated by usingthe usable MID arriving message newly defined as a type of a MIDoperation message shown in FIG. 17.

Each resource allocation communication process W041 is started when noMID is allocated. Thereafter, usable MID arriving messages are sent at apredetermined period of time. In this case, the node number fieldincludes the node number of a terminal in which the resource allocationcommunication process W041 which sends the message is executed. On theother hand, a value indicating that no MID is allocated is written inthe allocation MID field because no MID is allocated at this time. MID=0is allocated to an MID operation message, and cannot be allocated to theprocess. Therefore, from the point of view of effective use of an MIDnumber space, it is desirable that the value zero is used as the valueindicating that no MID is allocated.

According to the MID acquisition protocol described here, MIDs are notsimultaneously allocated to the resource allocation communicationprocesses W041, and the MIDs are sequentially allocated to the resourceallocation communication process W041. More specifically, while theprotocol described here operates, a process to which no MID is allocatedand a process to which an MID is allocated may be present at same time.In the resource allocation communication process W041 in which an MID isallocated, the allocated MID is written in the allocation MID field, andthe usable MID arriving messages are sent at predetermined timeintervals.

Each usable MID arriving message is transferred to a corresponding oneof the resource allocation communication processes W041 by the operationof the connection W06. When each resource allocation communicationprocess W041 receives the usable MID arriving message from theconnection W06 for a time about three times the sending time of the useMID arriving message, the resource allocation communication process W041can obtain a table of MIDs used on the connection W06. In addition, thenode number of a terminal in which the resource allocation communicationprocess W041 to which no MID is allocated.

The resource allocation communication process W041 having no MID refersto the table of the usable MID acquired by the resource allocationcommunication process W041 to select an MID to be used by the resourceallocation communication process W041 from remaining MIDs. When only oneresource allocation communication process W041 acquires a new MID, MIDacquisition is completed.

When a plurality of resource allocation communication processes W041select MIDs at once, MIDs may collide with each other depending on theseselections. In order to detect this and to reliably allocate a uniqueMID to each process, the following operation is performed.

The resource allocation communication process W041 which obtains the newMID waits for a predetermined time. In meantime, the resource allocationcommunication process W041 performs transmission of the usable MIDarriving message and reception of the message from the connection againto update a table of an MID allocation state. At this time, as describedabove, the usable MID arriving message sent from the resource allocationcommunication process W041 includes an MID to be used by the resourceallocation communication process W041. By referring to the table of theuse state of an MID updated a predetermined time after, it is understoodthat another process does not try to use an MID to be used by theresource allocation communication process W041. In this case,communication using this MID can be started.

When it is understood by referring the updated table that at leastanother process tries to use the same MID, the node numbers of theterminal in which the competing processes are executed are compared witheach other. When the node number of the terminal in which the resourceallocation communication process W041 is executed is the smallest numberin the terminal group in which the process group which tries to use thesame MID, communication using this MID is started; otherwise, an unusedMID is selected again, and a procedure for checking whether the MIDcollies with another MID is executed again.

In this MID selection, each process generates random numbers, and an MIDis selected according to the random numbers. In this case, preferablecharacteristics in which a probability of MID collision decreases can beobtained.

When all the resource allocation communication processes W041 executethe procedure, a unique MID can be allocated to each process. It shouldbe noted that this procedure is a procedure using that node numbers areuniquely allocated to all the terminals at manufacture time.

In this case, the above MID acquisition protocol is executed in such amanner that the terminal serving as an activation seed acquires MID=1and other terminals acquire MIDs except for the MID=1. It is assumedthat MID=1 is reserved for the terminal serving as the activation seed.

When the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06 is set, the terminalserving as the activation seed uses the result of network configurationrecognition to form the list of terminals which can execute thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i. Whether the terminalcan execute the communication bandwidth management process W03 i ischecked by checking whether the version number of the operating systemof the terminal obtained as the result of arrangement recognitionexceeds a predetermined value.

When the list of terminals which execute the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i, the terminal serving as the activation seed,in reception of the result of network arrangement recognition, physicallinks in the ATM-LAN to the terminals in the formed list by apredetermined method such that an almost equal number of physical linksare allocated to each terminal.

Upon completion of the above process, the terminal serving as theactivation seed, via the resource allocation communication process W04 iof the terminal, by using a message cellulated by MID=1, sequentiallyinforms the terminals included in the previously formed list of thearrangement information of the ATM-LAN obtained as the result ofarrangement recognition and the allocated physical links. The resourceallocation communication process W04 i changes a message into cells. Asa destination of the message, the node number disclosed by the presentinventor in Japanese Patent Application No. 6-31180 may be used. On theother hand, the resource allocation communication process W04 i of eachterminal assembles a message transferred through the n:n bidirectionalATM connection W06 on the basis of the MID of the cell. The resourceallocation communication process W04 i receives a message to be sent tothe resource allocation communication process W04 i with reference tothe destination of the message. The terminal which receives thearrangement information of the ATM-LAN and the allocated physical linksthrough the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06 forms a process queueor the like for managing of the bandwidths of the allocated physicallinks, and then activates the communication bandwidth management processW03 i including the arrangement information of the ATM-LAN and theformed process queues. In the terminal serving as the activation seed,after process queues for managing the bandwidths of physical linksallocated to the terminal, the communication bandwidth managementprocess W03 i includes the process queues and the arrangementinformation of the ATM-LAN is activated. With the above process, thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i is activated in eachterminal, and the physical links can be allocated to the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i. Subsequently, execution of the userprocesses W01 i on the terminals is managed in such a manner that theprocess scheduler W02 i of each terminal cooperates with reference tothe process queues of the communication bandwidth management process W03i in the following manner.

When the user process W01 i tries to assure a communication bandwidthused in communication with a terminal, the user process W01 i executes aprotocol well known as, e.g., ARP, by using the method usingcommunication on a broadcast channel disclosed by the present inventorin Japanese Patent Application No. 6-31180 or the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection W06, thereby obtaining the node number of a communicationdestination. The user process W01 i executes inquiry to thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i by using the obtainednode number. The communication bandwidth management process W03 i formsthe list of physical links used until the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i reaches the terminal of the notified nodenumber with reference to the arrangement information of the ATM-LAN heldby the communication bandwidth management process W03 i, and returns thelist of physical links to the user process W01 i which executes inquiry.

When the user process W01 i receives the list of physical links, theuser process W01 i sequentially sends communication bandwidthacquisition requests to the physical links in the list through theprocess scheduler W02 i. When the process scheduler W02 i receives thecommunication bandwidth acquisition request, the process scheduler W02 iexecutes inquiry to the communication bandwidth management process W03 iin the self terminal to check whether the communication bandwidthacquisition request is a communication bandwidth acquisition request tothe physical link managed in the self terminal. When the communicationbandwidth acquisition request is the communication bandwidth acquisitionrequest to the physical link managed in the self terminal, the processscheduler W02 i refers to a corresponding process queue in thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i in the self terminal tocheck whether a bandwidth according to the request can be allocated.When the bandwidth according to the request can be allocated, theprocess scheduler W02 i enqueues the identifier of a user process whichrequests the resource to the corresponding process queue, and executionof the user process which issues the request is continued. When abandwidth according to the request cannot be allocated, the followingdead-lock detection procedure is executed by the process scheduler W02i.

When the communication bandwidth acquisition request is thecommunication bandwidth acquisition request corresponding to a physicallink which is not managed in the self terminal, the communicationbandwidth acquisition request is broadcasted to other terminals throughthe n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06. In each terminal, thecommunication bandwidth acquisition request sent through the n:nbidirectional ATM connection W06 is monitored. When the request is thecommunication bandwidth acquisition request to the physical link managedby the terminal, the terminal receives the communication bandwidthacquisition request to check whether a bandwidth according to therequest can be allocated. If the resource is to be allocated, theidentifier of the process which requests the resource is enqueued to thecorresponding process queue. This checking result is informed to theterminal of a request sender by a response message including thechecking result through the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06. Whenthe process scheduler W02 i of the terminal of the request senderreceives a response message indicating that bandwidth allocation issucceeded, the process scheduler W02 i continues execution of the userprocess which requires the bandwidth. On the other hand, when theprocess scheduler W02 i receives a message indicating that bandwidthallocation is not succeeded, the process scheduler W02 i executesdead-lock detection procedure (to be described later). Note that it isassumed that the message indicating that bandwidth allocation is notsucceeded includes the identifier of the process to which the resourceis allocated. This is used in the dead-lock detection executed next.

When the terminal or another terminal fails to assure a bandwidth,before a user process (to be referred to a resource un-acquisitionprocess) which issues the failed bandwidth allocation request becomes asleep state, a dead-lock detection procedure shown in FIG. 21 or FIGS.24 to 28 and resource interception (if necessary) must be performed.This procedure or the like is performed in the process arrangement shownin FIG. 30 in the same manner as described above.

According to method disclosed here, the process scheduler W02 i whichcontrols execution of the resource un-acquisition process is mainly usedto perform a dead-lock detection/avoidance process while performinginquiry or instruction to other process schedulers W02 i. Subsequently,the process scheduler W02 i which mainly performs the dead-lockdetection/avoidance process is called a master process scheduler, and aprocess scheduler W02 j is called slave process scheduler. It should benoted that the master process scheduler is only one, but the slaveprocess scheduler means all the process schedulers except for the masterprocess scheduler included in the ATM-LAN. It should be noted that anyprocess scheduler may be the master process scheduler or the slaveprocess scheduler.

The master process scheduler informs, through the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection W06, each slave process scheduler of the identifier of theresource un-acquisition process. Each slave process scheduler W02 jreceived the identifier of the resource un-acquisition process refers toa communication bandwidth management process W03 j of the self terminaland a self resource management process W05 j to form a list (list A) ofresources which have been allocated to a user process having the arrivedidentifier and a list (list B) of processes which waits for theresources in units of resources, and returns the lists A and B to themaster process scheduler W02 i through the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection W06.

When the master process scheduler W02 i receives, from each slaveprocess scheduler, the list A which is a list of resources acquired bythe resource un-acquisition process and the list B which is a list ofprocesses waiting for these resources, the master process scheduler W02i refers to the communication bandwidth management process W03 i on theterminal on which the master process scheduler W02 i is executed andprocess queues included in the self resource management process W05 i,adds resources which are managed by the self terminal and acquired bythe resource un-acquisition process to the list A, and adds identifiersof processes which waits for resources managed by the self terminal andacquired by the resource un-acquisition process to the list B. In thismanner, the lists A and B related to all the resources in the ATM-LANare completed.

The master process scheduler W02 i checks whether the identifier of aprocess (to be referred to a rejection reason process hereinafter), towhich resources included in the response message indicating that theresource acquisition is failed and failed to be acquired by the userprocess is allocated, is included in the completed list B. When theidentifier of the rejection reason process is not included in the listB, dead-lock does not occur. For this reason, resource un-acquisitionprocess becomes a sleep state. At the same time, when the resourcefailed to be acquired is a resource managed by the self terminal, themaster process scheduler W02 i enqueues the identifier of the resourceun-acquisition process to the resource process queue which fails toacquire the resource. When a resource managed by a terminal except forthe terminal in which the process scheduler W02 i is executed is used, aslave process scheduler on the terminal which manages the resourcefailed to be acquired is requested to register the identifier of theresource un-acquisition process to a process queue, by using the n:nbidirectional ATM connection W06. A slave process scheduler requested toenqueue the identifier of resource un-acquisition process to the processqueue through the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06 executes therequested operation, and notifies the master process scheduler W02 i ofthe completion of the operation through the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection W06.

When the identifier of the rejection reason process is included in thecompleted list B, dead-lock occurs. For this reason, interception of theresource is performed to avoid the dead-lock. For this purpose, themaster process scheduler W02 i performs the following process.

The master process scheduler W02 i refers to the completed list A, andknows the type of the resource which has been acquired by the resourceun-acquisition process on the basis of resources for which the rejectionreason process waits. In addition, since the rejection reason processhas acquired the resource, the type of a resource failed to be acquiredby the resource un-acquisition process can be known.

Depending on these types of resources, it is determined whether theresource acquired by the rejection reason process is intercepted to beallocated to the resource un-acquisition process or the resourceacquired by the resource un-acquisition process is intercepted tointercept the resource acquired by the rejection reason process.

When the resource which is acquired by the rejection reason process andis to be acquired by the reason un-acquisition process and the resourcewhich is requested by the resource un-acquisition process and is to beacquired by the rejection reason process are resources having no sideeffect (in the case indicated by circled number 15 in FIG. 20), therejection reason process waits for the resource which has been acquiredby the resource un-acquisition process to be set in a sleep state. Forthis reason, in order to execute the resource un-acquisition processfirst, the resource acquired by the rejection reason process isintercepted to be resource un-acquisition process.

When the resource which is acquired by the rejection reason process andis to be acquired by the resource un-acquisition process or the resourcewhich is requested by the resource un-acquisition process and to beacquired by the rejection reason process is a resource having a sideeffect (in the case indicated by circled number 14 in FIG. 20), aresource having no side effect is preferably intercepted to reduceoverhead related to the interception.

When both of the resource which is acquired by the rejection reasonprocess and is to be acquired by the reason un-acquisition process andthe resource which is requested by the resource un-acquisition processand is to be acquired by the rejection reason process are resourceshaving side effects, it is regarded that a distributed applicationitself has dead-lock characteristics, an alarm may be given to themanager of the ATM-LAN to inform the manager of deadlock occurrence.When the ATM-LAN manager is notified of the dead-lock occurrence, themanager can set the process occurring dead-lock in a KILL state byinputting a command to release the dead-lock.

When a resource to be intercepted, an intercepted process, and a processfor newly allocating an intercepted resource are determined, the masterprocess scheduler forms a resource interception message including theidentifier of the resource to be intercepted, the identifier of theintercepted process, and the identifier of the process for allocatingthe intercepted resource, and sends the resource interception message toall the slave process schedulers through the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection W06.

According to the contents of the message, the slave process schedulerwhich receives the resource interception message updates the processqueue managed by the terminal in which the slave process scheduler isexecuted. As a result, when the slave process scheduler restarts theprocess which is executed and managed by the slave process scheduler,the slave process scheduler restarts the process. The same operation asdescribed above is also executed by the master process scheduler whichhas sent the resource interception message.

With the above operation, the above dead-lock avoidance can be executedin the distributed environment. In this case, in the above operation, itshould be noted that the identifiers of the processes and theidentifiers of the files are exchanged between the terminals. For thisreason, these identifiers must be unique in the entire ATM-LAN. However,this condition can be satisfied such that numbers obtained by adding anode number unique to the ATM-LAN disclosed by the present inventor inJapanese Patent Application No. 6-31180 to process numbers or filenumbers independently added to the terminals are transferred as processnumbers or node numbers on the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06.

The above operation is performed in all the physical links on the routeto the terminal having a resource to be used. When communicationbandwidths can be acquired in all the physical links, a connection to beset by the user process is set on the an ATM-LAN.

Note that it is cleared for one skilled in the art that a request toresources except for files and communication bandwidths can be processedin the same manner that of the request to the communication bandwidthdescribed above.

In execution of the procedure for performing the dead-lockdetection/avoidance, when each slave process scheduler allocates aresource to another user process or causes another user process to beset in a resource waiting state, the consistency between the contents ofthe lists A and B formed to detect dead-lock and a resource allocationstate in execution of avoidance is lost, and incorrect dead-lockdetection may be performed. In order to avoid this, in a period of timefrom when the identifier of the resource un-acquisition process isbroadcasted to when an enqueue command of the resource un-acquisitionprocess to a process queue or a resource interception command to anotherprocess is broadcasted, each process scheduler may temporarily stopallocation of resource is to the user process. This temporary stop canbe easily realized by allocating no processor to the user process whichrequests resources.

An operation performed when the network arrangement changes will bedescribed below. In the ATM-LAN, increase/decrease in physical link andterminal in number relatively frequently occur. For, this reason, it isdesired that the frame of management described here can automaticallyfollow the change in network arrangement.

The communication bandwidth management process W03 i, of the terminalserving as the activation state in the ATM-LAN, which sends a message tothe n:n bi-directional ATM connection W06 at MID=1 performs recognitionof the entire arrangement of ATM-LAN at a predetermined constant cycleby the method disclosed by the present inventor in Japanese PatentApplication No. 6-31180 to update arrangement information assured by thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i.

If new physical link is arranged, the communication bandwidth managementprocess W03 i determines the communication bandwidth management processW03 j for managing the new physical link, the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i requests the communication bandwidth managementprocess W03 j through the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06 to addthe managed physical link. The communication bandwidth managementprocess W03 j requested to add the managed physical link forms a processqueue corresponding to the added physical link to prepare communicationbandwidth management. Upon completion of preparation, the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i uses the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection W06 to notify a request sender of the completion ofpreparation.

When the physical link is removed, the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i of the terminal of MID=1 transfers a removalrequest, through the connection W06, to the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 j which manages the bandwidth of the physicallink. When the communication bandwidth management process W03 j isrequested to remove the physical link, the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 j removes a process queue corresponding to thephysical link from itself. Upon completion of removal, the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i informs the request sender of theremoval of process queue.

When the connection state is changed, the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i of the terminal of MID=1 forms a messageincluding new arrangement information, and sends the message to anothercommunication bandwidth management process W03 j through the connectionW06. When each communication bandwidth management process W03 j receivesa message for informing that the connection state is changed, thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 j updates the arrangementinformation assured by the communication bandwidth management processW03 j.

In order to perform the above operation, the communication bandwidthmanagement process on the terminal of MID=1 has the arrangementinformation of the ATM-LAN, management information such as the processqueue of a physical link managed by the process, and informationindicating that a specific communication bandwidth management processmanages a specific physical link.

<Process Migration>

A case wherein process migration is performed with the processarrangement shown in FIG. 30 will be described. In this case, a methodof performing process migration of a communication bandwidth process tomake it possible to perform connection setting even if a terminal istemporarily stopped for maintenance is disclosed.

In order to execute physical link allocation by the communicationbandwidth management process described above, the communicationbandwidth management process must be recognize each physical link. Forthis purpose, an identifier must be allocated to each physical link.When the node numbers disclosed by the present inventor in JapanesePatent Application No. 6-31180 and port numbers allocated to the hubsare paired, and these pairs are used as the identifiers of the physicallinks, the node numbers are global-uniquely defined. For this reason,the identifiers of the physical links are also global-uniquely defined.More specifically, when management of a physical link is to be performedon any terminal, the identifier of the same physical link can be used.For this reason, the communication bandwidth management process W03 iwhich manages the bandwidth of a physical link can be realized withsmall overhead.

When the terminal in which the communication bandwidth managementprocess W03 i is executed is turned off, in order to continue allocationof the physical links, the communication bandwidth management processW03 i is migrated. In this case, the process advances as follows. Whenthe communication bandwidth management process W03 i receives aninstruction of migration from an ATM-LAN maintenance person, thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i searches for a terminalfor executing the communication bandwidth management process W03 i. Thissearch is performed on the bidirectional ATM connection W06 by searchingfor a terminal having the lightest load.

The communication bandwidth management process W03 i specifies theterminal of a migration destination to the terminal in which thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i is newly executed, andrequests the process scheduler W02 i to transfer the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i to the new terminal. When the processscheduler W02 i receives a request of migration from the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i executed and managed by the processscheduler W02 i, the process scheduler W02 i sleeps the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i, and transfers the communicationbandwidth management process W03 i to the process scheduler W02 j of thespecified terminal through, e.g., the n:n bidirectional ATM connectionW06.

When the process scheduler W02 j receives the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i, the process scheduler W02 j restarts thereceived communication bandwidth management process W03 i as a processexecuted and managed by the process scheduler W02 j.

When the migrated communication bandwidth management process W03 i isre-executed on a new terminal, the communication bandwidth managementprocess W03 i can correspond to the resource allocation request from theuser process W01 i or the like again. This can be realized because eachcommunication bandwidth management process W03 i identifies physicallinks by means of identifiers which are global unique, i.e., significanton all the terminals on the ATM-LAN, and also identifies user processes.

As described above, the communication bandwidth management processstarted on the terminal serving as the activation seed, in preparationfor the following change in arrangement, holds information indicatingthat a specific physical link is allocated to a specific communicationbandwidth management process. For this reason, the communicationbandwidth management processes must be identified. According to thepresent invention, when identification of the processes is performed byMIDS, and the MIDs are used in migration, the migration can be executedwithout rewriting information about the relationship between thecommunication bandwidth processes and the physical links. Overheadrelated to the migration can be reduced. For this purpose, an MID isallocated to each communication bandwidth management process W03 i. Inthis manner, even after the migration, a change in arrangementinformation in each communication bandwidth management process caused bythe above change in arrangement can be executed without rewriting theinformation held by the communication bandwidth management process.

When the process scheduler W02 i receives a request from thecommunication bandwidth management process W03 i, the process schedulerW02 i executes migration of the communication bandwidth managementprocess W03 i at this time, the code of the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i and an environment (process queue or the like)held by the process must be transferred on the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection. As an MID used for changing a message for this transfer intocells, an MID which is originally used by the communication bandwidthmanagement process W03 i which performs the transfer. However, in thiscase, when the communication bandwidth management process W03 i ismigrated, there is no MID used when the following scheduler sends amessage to the n:n bidirectional ATM connection. In order to solve thisproblem, an MID is given to the process scheduler. More specifically, inorder to migrate the communication bandwidth management process, twotypes of MIDs for sending a message on the n:n bidirectional ATMconnection are desirably allocated to the terminal in which thecommunication bandwidth management process is executed. This can berealized in such a manner that one terminal operates to acquire two MIDsin an MID allocation protocol, i.e., two messages indicating that an MIDto be used by a terminal is informed to another terminal are sent. Oneof the acquired MIDs is used to identify the communication bandwidthmanagement processes, and the other is used to identify the processschedulers.

As described above, when identification of the communication bandwidthmanagement processes is not performed by node numbers, but is performedby MIDS, even if a terminal is temporarily stopped for maintenance, acommunication bandwidth management process executed on the terminal canbe easily migrated to another terminal. This is an advantage of adistributed application on the ATM communication system to which thepresent invention is applied. Note that the process scheduler W02 i andthe self resource management process W05 i are unique processes of eachterminal. When a terminal is stopped, these processes may be stopped.That is, these processes are not subjected to migration. MIDs allocatedto the processes which are not subjected to migration are identifiersfor identifying the processes, and can also be used as an identifier ofa terminal in which these processes are executed.

When migration of a user process is to be performed, in order to reduceoverhead in migration, it is apparent that a process identifier on aprocess queue must be global unique. The identifier of a process, e.g.,the above “pair between the node number of the terminal in which theprocess is executed and a process number on the terminal”, is a kind ofglobal unique identifier. This identifier can be continuously usedwithout being rewritten in migration. In this case, it must beunderstood that the node number does not indicate “terminal in which theprocess is executed”, but the node number of “terminal in which theprocess is started”. In this case, in order to reuse process numberissued from each terminal, when execution of a migrated process iscompleted, by using the node number which means the “terminal in whichthe process is started”, the process number of the completed process ispreferably informed to the terminal having the node number.

It is apparent that communication between user processes which aremigrated can be realized according to the above principle. In this case,in addition to the n:n bidirectional ATM connection W06, an ATMconnection group according to the principle of the present invention isset as a matter of course.

The description of a scheduling method of distributed-executed userprocesses to which the present invention is applied and a method ofrealizing the scheduling method using the present invention iscompleted.

As has been described above, according to the present invention,communication between processes subjected to migration is performedthrough an n:n bidirectional ATM connection, or an m:n unidirectionalATM connection and an n:m unidirectional ATM connection, and a processidentifier such as an MID used when a message for inter-processcommunication into cells is allocated to each process: Therefore, thecommunication can be continued by using the allocated process andconnection identifiers after migration, overhead in migration can bereduced.

According to the present invention, since a resource which ispreferentially intercepted is set to be the bandwidth of an ATMconnection in detection of dead-lock, overhead in a process switchingstate can be considerably reduced.

Additional advantages and modifications will readily occur to thoseskilled in the art. Therefore, the invention in its broader aspects isnot limited to the specific details, and representative devices shownand described herein. Accordingly, various modifications may be madewithout departing from the spirit or scope of the general inventiveconcept as defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.

1. A communication system comprising: at least one switch; a pluralityof terminals connected to each other through said at least one switch; aconnection setting unit configured to control, in advance of a processmigration, said at least one switch to set a connection for connectingtwo or more of said plurality of terminals bi-directionally, and forassigning a VPI and a VCI to said connection for each of said two ormore of said plurality of terminals to identify said connection by thesame VPI and VCI; an allocating unit configured to allocate a multiplexidentifier of an AAL3/4 to each of a plurality of messages as a processidentifier; and a migrating unit configured to move a process executedon one of said two or more of said plurality of terminals to another ofsaid two or more of said plurality of terminals, while the process keepsthe process identifier allocated by said allocating unit.
 2. Acommunication system according to claim 1, wherein the process sends amessage configured by a single cell including an identifier of theterminal in which the process is executed and the process identifierallocated to the process to said connection at predetermined timeintervals, when the message is received, holds the contents of themessage, and forms and holds a table of the process identifier allocatedto the process connected to said connection.
 3. A communication systemaccording to claim 1, wherein at least one process for managingresources has a global unique resource identifier which identifiesrespective resources, and a master resource process which allocates theresources to said at least one process when said communication system ispowered on, and identifies said at least one process by the processidentifier.
 4. A communication system according to claim 1, wherein atleast one process for managing resources manages a bandwidth of at leastone physical link between a plurality of switches or between said atleast one switch and one of said terminals, and a master resourceprocess which allocates the bandwidth for said at least one process whensaid communication system is activated and identifies said at least oneprocess by the process identifier, and when a required bandwidth for aconnection to be set by a process executed in one of said plurality ofterminals exceeds a remaining bandwidth of at least one physical linkand it is determined that the process becomes blocked by a dead-lock, aprocess executed in said communication system intercepts a bandwidth ofat least one or more blocked processes, and allocates the requiredbandwidth to the connection.
 5. A communication system comprising: atleast one switch; a plurality of terminals connected to each otherthrough said at least one switch; a connection setting unit configuredto control, in advance of a process migration, said at least one switchto set a connection for connecting two or more of said plurality ofterminals bi-directionally, and for assigning a VPI to said connectionfor each of said two or more of said plurality of terminals to identifysaid connection based on the same identifier of the terminals; anallocating unit configured to allocate a multiplex identifier of anAAL3/4 to each of a plurality of messages as a process identifier; and amigrating unit configured to move a process executed on one of said twoor more of said plurality of terminals to another of said two or more ofsaid plurality of terminals, while the process keeps the processidentifier allocated by said allocating unit.
 6. A communication systemaccording to claim 5, wherein the process sends a message configured bya single cell including an identifier of the terminal in which theprocess is executed and the process identifier allocated to the processto said connection at predetermined time intervals, when the message isreceived, holds the contents of the message, and forms and holds a tableof the process identifier allocated to the process connected to saidconnection.
 7. A communication system according to claim 5, wherein atleast one process for managing resources has a global unique resourceidentifier which identifies respective resources, and a master resourceprocess which allocates the resources to said at least one process whensaid communication system is powered on, and identifies said at leastone process by the process identifier.
 8. A communication systemaccording to claim 5, wherein at least one process for managingresources manages a bandwidth of at least one physical link between aplurality of switches or between said at least one switch and one ofsaid terminals, and a master resource process which allocates thebandwidth for said at least one process when said communication systemis activated and identifies said at least one process by the processidentifier, and when a required bandwidth for a connection to be set bya process executed in one of said plurality of terminals exceeds aremaining bandwidth of at least one physical link and it is determinedthat the process becomes blocked by a dead-lock, a process executed insaid communication system intercepts a bandwidth of at least onephysical link reserved by one or more blocked processes, and allocatesthe required bandwidth to the connection.